I just got top dentures today. I decided to keep a diary of sorts to see how this massive change to my face affects my life.
HOW MY TEETH GOT BAD
First, a little history. I have epilepsy and was put on the medication Tegritol from 1993-2008. In 2004 I was informed that the seizure medicine was softening my teeth, causing them to crack and making it easy to get cavities. I had severe allergic reactions to local anesthetics all my life, so I had to go to a dental school to receive general anesthesia. At that time, I was warned that the damage was too severe, and I would likely need dentures in 10 years.
Then I moved states and lost my insurance. I no longer had easy access to a dental surgery school. I went to the local dental school, but they could not transfer me to the surgical part. I would need a regular dentist to do that. Once my husband and I finally got on medical and dental insurance again, I began looking for a dentist who could do general anesthesia. I found one, who shall remain nameless. I was told that not only would I have to fly their general anesthesiologist from California, but then the cost would be $300 every 15 minutes. That did not include the dental work. All in all, $5000 was the quote. We barely had $1000 to spare. I got angry that I could fly to Mexico and have the same job done for half the price. After that, I pretty much gave up on the idea of fixing my teeth.
Five years passed. Teeth that had small cavities suddenly had gapping holes. Although I was no longer on that tooth-destroying medication, the damage was done. Simply biting into a peanut hidden in my Chinese food could crack and completely break off a tooth. I called dentist after dentist only to be told they couldn't help me due to my allergies and epilepsy. We lost our insurance again, and any hopes of getting work done died. I simply reduced my diet to pastas, soups, anything soft, and took care of my teeth as best as I could with restorative toothpastes and mouthwashes.
POINT OF NO RETURN
My teeth issue became so bad that five months ago, November 2011, I got a severe abscess. We were told that my husband's insurance would kick in 90 days after he was hired, so I put ice packs on my face and suffered through it for two weeks as we waited for that magical 90th day. It arrived, and we found out that 90 days was when he became eligible for insurance, but the actual coverage would not start until January 1st, 2012. The swelling was affecting my ability to breathe. I was a one step away from an ER visit. No way could I last that long!
The infection spread until it infected three teeth. I had to quit playing trombone. My throat swelled until I was gagging, I became feverish, my ears were affected, and I was stuck at home in utter agony.
I was desperate and went to Gentle Dental. Once again, I was told that they could do nothing for me, what with the health issues. However, since I was truly a medical emergency at this point, they set up for me to see an oral surgeon. That was arranged, and he asked if I had ever tried Carbocaine. Never heard of it. Last time I agreed to a medication I had never heard of before, I was given Diprivan and my throat swelled shut. However, that was already happening with the abscess. I knew this infection would become fatal if I did nothing. What did I have to lose?
Needless to say, I was desperate. I decided to play his game of Russian Roulette and try this mysterious new local anesthetic. Many precautions were taken: antibiotics, steroids, antihistamines, monitors all over the place to keep an eye on my vitals. Verced was used to deal with the epilepsy issues. I drifted off to sleep hoping that, at the very least, I would wake up.
It worked! No instant death, no choking, no swelling, no blood pressure bottoming out, no needing to be resuscitated. Three teeth were pulled, yet I was warned at that time, I really needed a denture. My top teeth were too far gone.
NEW DOCTOR, NEW TEETH
Finally we got insurance in January, and I started the process by getting a dentist in our town who took our insurance. My new dentist agreed, I needed my upper teeth extracted, a top denture, bottom bridge, and two root canals on the bottom molars. Well, our insurance only covers $1500 a year, the dentures alone were $1470 with the insurance covering 50% of that, so just one root canal would have eaten up the last of my benefits, and that's before surgery. I opted to just have those two pulled as well.
Then off to the oral surgeon. He decided to mimic the medicine use by the last oral surgeon: carbocaine, antihistamines, with Verced and Brevital. He also said I needed a frenulectomy. I have (or had, I should say) a muscle that stretches from my lip, between my front teeth--causing them to be widely spaced--and to the roof of my mouth. It's a genetic birth defect that I should have had fixed as a child but didn't have the money.
We had a game plan. Then it was back to the dentist a couple more times, getting impressions for my dentures. That was a gross experience. The putty squished back into my throat. They should have warned me to put my tongue back there to stop it. Instead, it dripped down the throat, and I was not allowed to lean forward and cough it out. I was a trooper, breathing cautiously as I felt this rubbery substance harden around my uvula and down my esophagus, recking havoc on my gag reflexes. It was supposed to set for four minutes. I lasted three before the hardening rubber made it impossible to breathe. The dentist realized I was seriously choking and turning purple, so she pulled it out fast. I then vomited out blue rubber and had to cough it out of my throat for a few minutes. Turned out the impression had an air bubble. Dammit! Three times, I went through this gross and--with such bad teeth--highly painful process before the molding was just right.
I had to wait another two weeks while the dentures were being made. During that time, one of my teeth broke while eating chow mien (yes, just chow mien) and formed an abscess. Antibiotics were all they could do since the tooth was scheduled for extraction. It turned into a painful race: could I put up with the abscess long enough until the tooth could be pulled?
DENTAL ARMAGEDDON
As a joke, I called this whole issue "Dental Armageddon." My teeth were getting "raptured" while I would be left behind in agony.
At 8:30 AM today, I went to the oral surgeon, got hooked up to the sedation IV, and fell into a wonderful sleep holding my husband's hand. I woke up with the nurse telling me over and over to open my eyes. They eventually did open, and quite widely at that, when the oral surgeon tried to fit my new denture right onto the holes of my newly-pulled teeth and one sliced-up frenulum. Oddly enough, what hurt far too bad to handle was the swollen area of my abscess. Either it did not drain well, or it was just too tender. The oral surgeon thought my hazy moans of agony were due to the frenulum and kept adjusting that part of the denture. I was too dazed to explain that it was fine, but the abscess area was too swollen for the denture to fit.
I got home and promptly fell back to sleep. I had earlier covered my pillow with an old blanket so I could drool blood without worries. This was a good plan, because I woke up with my mouth filled with blood, a massive blood clot on my tongue, and another on the roof of my new denture. The blood squishing out from the back of my denture made me gag. I nearly vomited from excessive bleeding twice.
Luckily, that got better after a few hours. As of now, it's still bleeding a lot, but not enough to choke me. I need gauze on the two bottom right molars that were extracted, and a balancing gauze on the left side, which helps to catch the blood squishing out of my denture.
FOOD AND NOMS
Since I was already limited on what I could eat, going to soft food is no big deal. For my first day after surgery, I had a strawberry Slim Fast shake so I could get my nutrition. I had another at lunch, with a small cup of strawberry yogurt. Dinner was cream of chicken soup, which I mostly drank since I'm not used to the lack of sensation on the roof of my mouth. Since that didn't fill me up, I had a cup of Jello pudding. Some melty vanilla ice cream for dessert was nice, since I rarely get ice
cream, but my mom said it helped her to take down swelling when she got
dentures. I have to lick up the pudding and ice cream since my mouth is too swollen for a spoon. I should have bought a baby spoon.
My drinks at first were just water, but after seeing that I was okay with Slim Fast, I requested my husband get me some almond milk. That was a little harder to drink, so I went back to water-based liquids. I had warm apple cider (not hot) with my dinner, and some warm licorice tea for bed.
THE FORGOTTEN
One thing that I found annoying was the last minute changes. First we were quoted that, after insurance, we owned about $3000. Then the oral surgeon office actually called the insurance. We owed only $1700. That's great, that's wonderful, but since we're pretty much broke, we needed to know how much money to beg our parents to give us. Being told one quote only to get another was stressful. At least it went down, not up.
Also, I should mention that it was the dentist's plan to have all of my work done on one day. This would include fillings, a deep cleaning of the remaining bottom teeth, extractions, and frenulectomy. We had checks written out for all of these. Then yesterday while we were calling around finalizing everything, the dentist just now informed me that she decided not to do the fillings today.
She was the one who demanded we have this on a Friday so she could come to the oral surgeon's office, but then she said she wouldn't have the equipment she'd need there. Shouldn't she have known what equipment she'd need from the very start? Or at least have figured out this whole issue during our "game plan" meetings?
The whole reason for the all-in-one-day plan was because of my allergies. Her office does not use carbocaine, and I have to be sedated for the epilepsy. That can only happen at the oral surgeon's place. Her response to this problem was "I'll call the oral surgeon and figure out what I can use here."
Really? And you decided to pull out of this collaborative job when? The day before surgery???
ANYTHING ELSE
So other than a flaking dentist and excessive bleeding, how am I doing? Much better than I feared. I thought I would be in utter agony, but the Vicodin is taking care of that. My denture is supposed to stay in for a while. It keeps bacteria out of the extraction holes, prevents dry socket, and the pressure helps with the healing. Right now, possibly due to swelling, my denture feels like it's suction-cupped to the roof of my mouth.
When I take out the gauze and test out my mouth a little, the teeth feel weird. My mouth was really messed up, so maybe this is how normal teeth are supposed to feel. I don't know. Swelling might also be a factor. My top lip doesn't fit over my dentures. They are half the length of my real teeth, but the gum feels twice as thick. My small upper lip simply doesn't stretch.
There's also a slight gap between the back of my denture and the roof of my mouth. Any pressure from my tongue there makes the denture feel like it's about the flip out. Except it really is suctioned in there. Which is good!
My husband is staying home to take care of me. Once I felt well enough to stand, we watched the 25th Anniversary performance of The Phantom of the Opera, our favorite musical. I've seen it live twice, and for our anniversary he took me to see the live world-wide broadcast from Royal Albert Hall. That's the video we watched, of that performance. It was a good way to cheer me up. Although I almost fell asleep during "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again."
I've stayed in bed most of this first day. I'm waiting until I can take more Vicodin, then I should go to bed.
So this is Part 1 of my dental adventure.
Or I could say, Day One of Dental Armageddon!
Showing posts with label epilepsy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label epilepsy. Show all posts
Friday, April 06, 2012
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Epilepsy = Brilliance? Awesome!
Note: this was totally ripped off of this author but only because I'm recovering from a seizure and can't think to write my own entry. Maybe after this spell, I will have a burst of creativity, eh? One can hope...
===
Did you know that the earliest references to epilepsy date back to the fifth millennium B.C. in Mesopotamia? That's a few years before Sarah Palin believes that the earth was even created. Sorry, I couldn't resist. Priests unsuccessfully tried to cure people with epilepsy by exercising the "demons" out of them. Atreya of India and later Hippocrates, both of whom recognized a seizure as a dysfunction of the brain, challenged this absurdity of superstitious thought surrounding epilepsy. But the superstitions surrounding epilepsy continued for hundreds of years.
I actually feel a bit honored to be amongst a rather commendable group of other epileptics. You see, epileptic seizures historically, have suggested a relationship with creativity or unusual leadership abilities. Scholars have long studied evidence that prominent prophets and other holy men, political leaders, philosophers, artists and scientists, suffered from epilepsy.
According to Epilepsy.com, Aristotle was apparently the first to connect epilepsy and genius.
His catalog of "great epileptics" (which included Socrates) was added to during the Renaissance. Only people from Western culture were included, however. So strong was this tradition that even in the nineteenth century, when new names of "great epileptics" were added, they were rarely chosen from among people in other parts of the world. Working from this biased historical legacy, the famous people with epilepsy that we know about are primarily white males.
Eve LaPlante in her book Seized writes that the abnormal brain activity found in temporal lobe (complex partial) epilepsy plays a role in creative thinking and the making of art. Neuropsychologist Dr. Paul Spiers says:
"Sometimes the same things that cause epilepsy result in giftedness. If you damage an area [of the brain] early enough in life, the corresponding area on the other side has a chance to overdevelop."
We know that epilepsy involves temporary bursts of excessive electrical activity in different locations in the brain, locations which house our bodily sensations and functions as well as our memories and emotions. Psychiatrist Dr. David Bear states that the abnormal brain activity found in temporal lobe epilepsy can play a role in creative thinking and the making of art by uniting sensitivity, insight and sustained, critical attention. According to Dr. Bear:
"A temporal lobe focus in the superior individual may spark an extraordinary search for that entity we alternately call truth or beauty."
What is also clear in the discussion of genius and epilepsy is that some of the most famous people in history had seizures. People with epilepsy have excelled in every area.
The list of famous authors and playwrights whom historians believe had epilepsy is a bit overwhelming. It includes: Dante, the author of The Divine Comedy, who is not only Italy's pre-eminent poet but one of the towering figures of Western literature; Moliere, the master comic dramatist of the eighteenth century whose plays Tartuffe, The Imaginary Invalid and The Misanthrope are still being regularly performed today; Sir Walter Scott, one of the foremost literary figures of the romantic period whose books like Ivanhoe and Waverley remain widely read classics; the 18th century English satirist Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels; the nineteenth century American author Edgar Allan Poe; as well as three of the greatest English Romantic poets, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Alfred Lord Tennyson.
Charles Dickens, the Victorian author of such classic books as A Christmas Carol and Oliver Twist had epilepsy, as did several of the characters in his books. The medical accuracy of Dickens's descriptions of epilepsy has amazed the doctors who read him today.
Lewis Carroll, in his famous stories Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, was probably writing about his own temporal lobe seizures. The very sensation initiating Alice' adventures- that of falling down a hole- is a familiar one to many people with seizures. Alice often feels that her own body (or the objects around her) is shrinking or growing before her eyes, another seizure symptom. Carroll recorded his seizures, which were followed by prolonged headaches and feeling not his usual self, in his journal.
From his writings we know a lot about the epilepsy of the great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, author of such classics as Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, who is considered by many to have brought the Western novel to the peak of its possibilities.
Dostoevsky had his first seizure at age nine. After a remission which lasted up to age 25, he had seizures every few days or months, fluctuating between good and bad periods. His ecstatic auras occurring seconds before his bigger seizures were moments of transcendent happiness, which then changed to an anguished feeling of dread. He saw a blinding flash of light, then would cry out and lose consciousness for a second or two. Sometimes the epileptic discharge generalized across his brain, producing a secondary tonic-clonic (grand mal) seizure. Afterward he could not recall events and conversations that had occurred during the seizure, and he often felt depressed, guilty and irritable for days. Epilepsy is a central source of themes, personalities, and events in his books; he gave epilepsy to about 30 of his characters.
The other great nineteenth century Russian author, Count Leo Tolstoy, author of Anna Karenina and War and Peace, also had epilepsy.
Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia about 2,300 years ago and one of the greatest generals in history, had epilepsy. At the time epilepsy was known as "the sacred disease" because of the belief that those who had seizures were possessed by evil spirits or touched by the gods and should be treated by invoking mystical powers.
Julius Caesar, another brilliant general and formidable politician, had seizures in the last two years of his life, possibly caused by a brain tumour. Caesar was known to have fallen convulsing into the River Tiber. By this time, epilepsy had become known as "the falling sickness" because the kind of seizures that made a person lose consciousness and fall down were the only kind then recognized as epilepsy. (Complex partial seizures were not recognized until the middle of the nineteenth century.) Human blood was widely regarded by the Romans as having curative powers, and people with epilepsy in Caesar's time were commonly seen sucking blood from fallen gladiators.
Napoleon Bonaparte was probably the most brilliant military figure in history. He too is known to have had epilepsy.
Another extraordinary leader of a very different time and place was Harriet Tubman, the black woman with epilepsy who led hundreds of her fellow slaves from the American South to freedom in Canada on the Underground Railroad. Tubman developed her seizure disorder through sustaining a head injury: her slave master hit her in the head with a rock.
Saint Paul's seizure-like experiences are the best documented of the major religious figures. On the road to Damascus he saw a bright light flashing around him, fell to the ground and was left temporarily blinded by his vision and unable to eat or drink. Paul is thought by some physicians to have had facial motor and sensitive disturbances coming after ecstatic seizures; they have diagnosed him with temporal lobe epilepsy which occasionally developed into secondary tonic-clonic attacks.
Joan of Arc was an uneducated farmer's daughter in a remote village of medieval France who altered the course of history through her amazing military victories. From age thirteen Joan reported ecstatic moments in which she saw flashes of light coming from the side, heard voices of saints and saw visions of angels.
In the opinion of the neurologist Dr. Lydia Bayne, Joan's blissful experiences "in which she felt that the secrets of the universe were about to be revealed to her"- were seizures, and they were triggered by the ringing of church bells. Joan displayed symptoms of a temporal lobe focus epilepsy: specifically, a musicogenic form of reflex epilepsy with an ecstatic aura. Musicogenic epilepsy is generally triggered by particular music which has an emotional significance to the individual. Joan's voices and visions propelled her to become an heroic soldier in the effort to save France from English domination and led to her martyrdom in 1431, burned at the stake as a heretic when she was 19 years old.
Soren Kierkegaard, the brilliant Danish philosopher and religious thinker considered to be the father of existentialism, worked hard at keeping his epilepsy secret.
In the fine arts, Vincent van Gogh is today probably the most widely known and appreciated artist with epilepsy. "The storm within" was how van Gogh described his typical seizure, which consisted of hallucinations, unprovoked feelings of anger, confusion and fear, and floods of early memories that disturbed him because they were outside his control.
Van Gogh also had convulsive seizures; a hospital worker witnessed Vincent having one while painting outside. He was prescribed potassium bromide as an anticonvulsant and ordered to spend countless hours bathing in tubs at the asylum in Saint-Remy. His most troubling seizures peaked with his greatest art in the south of France, where he painted A Starry Night, the extraordinary Self-Portrait, and the famous Crows in the Wheatfields.
There have been a number of prominent composers and musicians with epilepsy. George Frederick Handel, the famous baroque composer of the Messiah, is one. Niccolo Paganini is another. Paganini was an Italian violinist and composer considered by many to be the greatest violinist of all time. The eminent Russian composer of the ballets Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, Peter Tchaikovsky, is believed to have had epilepsy. Ludwig van Beethoven, one of the greatest masters of music, may have had epilepsy as well.
Modern writers who had epilepsy include: Dame Agatha Christie, the leading British writer of mystery novels, and Truman Capote, American author of In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Modern actors with epilepsy include Richard Burton, Michael Wilding, Margaux Hemingway and Danny Glover.
On second thought, boy oh boy, that sure puts the pressure on me to be brilliant. Oh well, I can be one of the not so fabulous epileptics that achieved mediocrity in full force.
===
May I also add to this list:
* Hugo Weaving, one of my favorite actors of all time
* Hector Berlioz, super awesome composers, one of my favs
* Robert Schumann, another fav
* Vladamir Lenin
* George Gershwin
* Neil Young
* Leonardo di Vinci
* Michelangelo
* Pythagoras (remember him from Trig?)
* Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
*Jean Clemens, daughter of Mark Twain
* Hikari Oe, musician and son of one of my favorite Japanese authors, Kenzaburo Oe
===
Did you know that the earliest references to epilepsy date back to the fifth millennium B.C. in Mesopotamia? That's a few years before Sarah Palin believes that the earth was even created. Sorry, I couldn't resist. Priests unsuccessfully tried to cure people with epilepsy by exercising the "demons" out of them. Atreya of India and later Hippocrates, both of whom recognized a seizure as a dysfunction of the brain, challenged this absurdity of superstitious thought surrounding epilepsy. But the superstitions surrounding epilepsy continued for hundreds of years.
I actually feel a bit honored to be amongst a rather commendable group of other epileptics. You see, epileptic seizures historically, have suggested a relationship with creativity or unusual leadership abilities. Scholars have long studied evidence that prominent prophets and other holy men, political leaders, philosophers, artists and scientists, suffered from epilepsy.
According to Epilepsy.com, Aristotle was apparently the first to connect epilepsy and genius.
His catalog of "great epileptics" (which included Socrates) was added to during the Renaissance. Only people from Western culture were included, however. So strong was this tradition that even in the nineteenth century, when new names of "great epileptics" were added, they were rarely chosen from among people in other parts of the world. Working from this biased historical legacy, the famous people with epilepsy that we know about are primarily white males.
Eve LaPlante in her book Seized writes that the abnormal brain activity found in temporal lobe (complex partial) epilepsy plays a role in creative thinking and the making of art. Neuropsychologist Dr. Paul Spiers says:
"Sometimes the same things that cause epilepsy result in giftedness. If you damage an area [of the brain] early enough in life, the corresponding area on the other side has a chance to overdevelop."
We know that epilepsy involves temporary bursts of excessive electrical activity in different locations in the brain, locations which house our bodily sensations and functions as well as our memories and emotions. Psychiatrist Dr. David Bear states that the abnormal brain activity found in temporal lobe epilepsy can play a role in creative thinking and the making of art by uniting sensitivity, insight and sustained, critical attention. According to Dr. Bear:
"A temporal lobe focus in the superior individual may spark an extraordinary search for that entity we alternately call truth or beauty."
What is also clear in the discussion of genius and epilepsy is that some of the most famous people in history had seizures. People with epilepsy have excelled in every area.
The list of famous authors and playwrights whom historians believe had epilepsy is a bit overwhelming. It includes: Dante, the author of The Divine Comedy, who is not only Italy's pre-eminent poet but one of the towering figures of Western literature; Moliere, the master comic dramatist of the eighteenth century whose plays Tartuffe, The Imaginary Invalid and The Misanthrope are still being regularly performed today; Sir Walter Scott, one of the foremost literary figures of the romantic period whose books like Ivanhoe and Waverley remain widely read classics; the 18th century English satirist Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels; the nineteenth century American author Edgar Allan Poe; as well as three of the greatest English Romantic poets, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Alfred Lord Tennyson.
Charles Dickens, the Victorian author of such classic books as A Christmas Carol and Oliver Twist had epilepsy, as did several of the characters in his books. The medical accuracy of Dickens's descriptions of epilepsy has amazed the doctors who read him today.
Lewis Carroll, in his famous stories Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, was probably writing about his own temporal lobe seizures. The very sensation initiating Alice' adventures- that of falling down a hole- is a familiar one to many people with seizures. Alice often feels that her own body (or the objects around her) is shrinking or growing before her eyes, another seizure symptom. Carroll recorded his seizures, which were followed by prolonged headaches and feeling not his usual self, in his journal.
From his writings we know a lot about the epilepsy of the great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, author of such classics as Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, who is considered by many to have brought the Western novel to the peak of its possibilities.
Dostoevsky had his first seizure at age nine. After a remission which lasted up to age 25, he had seizures every few days or months, fluctuating between good and bad periods. His ecstatic auras occurring seconds before his bigger seizures were moments of transcendent happiness, which then changed to an anguished feeling of dread. He saw a blinding flash of light, then would cry out and lose consciousness for a second or two. Sometimes the epileptic discharge generalized across his brain, producing a secondary tonic-clonic (grand mal) seizure. Afterward he could not recall events and conversations that had occurred during the seizure, and he often felt depressed, guilty and irritable for days. Epilepsy is a central source of themes, personalities, and events in his books; he gave epilepsy to about 30 of his characters.
The other great nineteenth century Russian author, Count Leo Tolstoy, author of Anna Karenina and War and Peace, also had epilepsy.
Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia about 2,300 years ago and one of the greatest generals in history, had epilepsy. At the time epilepsy was known as "the sacred disease" because of the belief that those who had seizures were possessed by evil spirits or touched by the gods and should be treated by invoking mystical powers.
Julius Caesar, another brilliant general and formidable politician, had seizures in the last two years of his life, possibly caused by a brain tumour. Caesar was known to have fallen convulsing into the River Tiber. By this time, epilepsy had become known as "the falling sickness" because the kind of seizures that made a person lose consciousness and fall down were the only kind then recognized as epilepsy. (Complex partial seizures were not recognized until the middle of the nineteenth century.) Human blood was widely regarded by the Romans as having curative powers, and people with epilepsy in Caesar's time were commonly seen sucking blood from fallen gladiators.
Napoleon Bonaparte was probably the most brilliant military figure in history. He too is known to have had epilepsy.
Another extraordinary leader of a very different time and place was Harriet Tubman, the black woman with epilepsy who led hundreds of her fellow slaves from the American South to freedom in Canada on the Underground Railroad. Tubman developed her seizure disorder through sustaining a head injury: her slave master hit her in the head with a rock.
Saint Paul's seizure-like experiences are the best documented of the major religious figures. On the road to Damascus he saw a bright light flashing around him, fell to the ground and was left temporarily blinded by his vision and unable to eat or drink. Paul is thought by some physicians to have had facial motor and sensitive disturbances coming after ecstatic seizures; they have diagnosed him with temporal lobe epilepsy which occasionally developed into secondary tonic-clonic attacks.
Joan of Arc was an uneducated farmer's daughter in a remote village of medieval France who altered the course of history through her amazing military victories. From age thirteen Joan reported ecstatic moments in which she saw flashes of light coming from the side, heard voices of saints and saw visions of angels.
In the opinion of the neurologist Dr. Lydia Bayne, Joan's blissful experiences "in which she felt that the secrets of the universe were about to be revealed to her"- were seizures, and they were triggered by the ringing of church bells. Joan displayed symptoms of a temporal lobe focus epilepsy: specifically, a musicogenic form of reflex epilepsy with an ecstatic aura. Musicogenic epilepsy is generally triggered by particular music which has an emotional significance to the individual. Joan's voices and visions propelled her to become an heroic soldier in the effort to save France from English domination and led to her martyrdom in 1431, burned at the stake as a heretic when she was 19 years old.
Soren Kierkegaard, the brilliant Danish philosopher and religious thinker considered to be the father of existentialism, worked hard at keeping his epilepsy secret.
In the fine arts, Vincent van Gogh is today probably the most widely known and appreciated artist with epilepsy. "The storm within" was how van Gogh described his typical seizure, which consisted of hallucinations, unprovoked feelings of anger, confusion and fear, and floods of early memories that disturbed him because they were outside his control.
Van Gogh also had convulsive seizures; a hospital worker witnessed Vincent having one while painting outside. He was prescribed potassium bromide as an anticonvulsant and ordered to spend countless hours bathing in tubs at the asylum in Saint-Remy. His most troubling seizures peaked with his greatest art in the south of France, where he painted A Starry Night, the extraordinary Self-Portrait, and the famous Crows in the Wheatfields.
There have been a number of prominent composers and musicians with epilepsy. George Frederick Handel, the famous baroque composer of the Messiah, is one. Niccolo Paganini is another. Paganini was an Italian violinist and composer considered by many to be the greatest violinist of all time. The eminent Russian composer of the ballets Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, Peter Tchaikovsky, is believed to have had epilepsy. Ludwig van Beethoven, one of the greatest masters of music, may have had epilepsy as well.
Modern writers who had epilepsy include: Dame Agatha Christie, the leading British writer of mystery novels, and Truman Capote, American author of In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Modern actors with epilepsy include Richard Burton, Michael Wilding, Margaux Hemingway and Danny Glover.
On second thought, boy oh boy, that sure puts the pressure on me to be brilliant. Oh well, I can be one of the not so fabulous epileptics that achieved mediocrity in full force.
===
May I also add to this list:
* Hugo Weaving, one of my favorite actors of all time
* Hector Berlioz, super awesome composers, one of my favs
* Robert Schumann, another fav
* Vladamir Lenin
* George Gershwin
* Neil Young
* Leonardo di Vinci
* Michelangelo
* Pythagoras (remember him from Trig?)
* Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
*Jean Clemens, daughter of Mark Twain
* Hikari Oe, musician and son of one of my favorite Japanese authors, Kenzaburo Oe
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