The Return To Innocence

At this point in my life, I've started shrugging it off and doing everything I can to be everything I can, if that makes sense. I can't deny any of this. I can't wish it away with whatever that magical positive thinking is supposed to do... something about asking the universe to help out? Something about deciding to change overnight and then magically changing just with determination and willpower? I don't know. I think someone wrote a book about it.
However, I'm not going to just fall down and let it take over. That's pointless. I don't plan on sitting back and hurting. I'm going to plan on standing up, running around, and hurting because hurting will happen anyway. I have life to live and things to do. In fact, some of the medicine I've been taking has been helping me remember stuff I keep forgetting, sometimes. Good times, if I can remember them. I need to keep writing everything down. I'm not even worried, upset, or frightened. I was born this way. I can't make it go away, but I can make it better one step at a time. Especially with qi gong. Screw yoga, qi gong is awesome for me.

Quoting:
Post-impairment syndrome is a combination of symptoms that affect adults with cerebral palsy. According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, this combination includes fatigue, pain, arthritis and weakness that is often a part of daily life. This symptom is due to the muscle abnormalities and bony changes that happen as you age with cerebral palsy. You can use three to five times more energy each day than an able-bodied person just to complete your daily living activities. This extra expenditure of energy combined with the spasticity and extra wear on the joints is a hallmark symptom of adults who suffer from cerebral palsy.

Links!
http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Cerebral-palsy/Pages/Complications.aspx
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/cerebral_palsy/detail_cerebral_palsy.htm
http://www.cpirf.org/stories/465
http://www.disabled-world.com/artman/publish/health-challenges.shtml
http://www.accesspress.org/2009/01/growing-older-with-cerebral-palsy/
http://www.caregiverslibrary.org/caregivers-resources/grp-diseases/hsgrp-cerebral-palsy/cerebral-palsy-and-aging-article.aspx
http://www.cerebralpalsytherapy.net/cerebral-palsy-and-fatigue.html

I already know a lot of this stuff... but so many people don't. And that's where the misinformation happens. The denial, the scolding, the disbelief, the insistence that people with cerebral palsy can concentrate all the pain away, the accusations that people with cerebral palsy deliberate seek to be crippled and debilitated. No matter how well a person thinks they know you, they don't have your condition. And that's where it gets tricky. Because they believe that you can overcome the whole thing. And that is where education and information come in.

It really is extraordinary how people can be so adamantly ignorant about epilepsy, and even worse can be in pure denial. Teenagers whose mothers refuse to acknowledge it and won't even write it on medical forms. Doctors who try to pass it off as something else and even prescribe the wrong kind of medication. Friends, family members, classmates, coworkers, and strangers who think it "would be fun to have a seizure" for any reason (go home early, have excuses to leave functions, etc).

In my research and readings, I have come across a fascinating correlation between four distinct disorders: Epilepsy, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, and anxiety disorder. In fact, any one of these illnesses can often be triggered (if one has two or more, of course), or caused, by the other. The interesting thing is that epilepsy is not considered a psychological or mental disorder, but a true neurological disorder. However, its symptoms can often correlate with the symptoms of these three distinct mental disorders.
In borderline personality disorder, symptoms can be felt in the temporal lobe in almost the exact way of a partial seizure, for example. A complex partial seizure can often mimic a bipolar episode, usually hypomanic. Seizures can sometimes lead to panic attacks, and panic attacks can sometimes lead to seizures (although, to make this clear, panic attacks and seizures have very marked differences and symptoms, which I shall go into in a moment). Dysphoria is an extremely common symptom of all four disorders, although euphoria is more often felt by temporal lobe epileptics depending on what triggers the seizure. In epileptics, there is often a syndrome known as interictal dysphoric disorder (between seizures). This can sometimes be mistaken for bipolar or borderline, depending on how symptoms are displayed.
Several days ago, after recovering for two full days from a severe complex partial seizure, I had a panic attack. I knew exactly what it was. I felt it in my chest, in my lungs, in my head. I had paranoia, irrational fear, worry, sadness. However, the attack disappeared once Adam helped me calm down. This cannot and does not happen with a seizure.

Something that really fascinates me is that the same medication used for epilepsy is often prescribed to treat the three mental illnesses. I am on Trileptal, which can be used for bipolar, borderline, anxiety, and OCD. A few people I know are on Topamax, and others are on Lamictal, Tegretol, and Lyrica. Again, similar treatments. This is one of the reasons I talk about these four disorders together.

I think I would like everyone who assumes wrong things about any of these illnesses to really take the time to study and understand them. It would be much less irritating/frustrating/annoying. Perhaps then, those of us afflicted can go about our lives without people wondering if we are about to "go crazy" at a moment's notice.