The Story Of My 3 Grand Mal Seizures, 5 Day Amnesia, And Epilepsy Diagnosis

It has been over 2 weeks since I have made a post, and for good reason too. Some of you have seen my last post about me being in the emergency room. I actually posted that and don’t have any memory of it. In that post, it says that about 36 hours of my memory were lost, well, it actually was more… I just didn’t know it at the time. I have virtually zero memory of almost everything from January 15th, and it gradually gets better and better as time goes on. My memory right now is still not up to par but there were about 4-5 days where I have no memory, or just fragments of various random instances. This will be a relatively long post, so brace yourself if you choose to keep reading, it is the full account of what happened to me. Most of which I have no memory of, it’s just based off what I have been told. Also, if my diction is hard to read, it’s probably because my brain is still a little scrambled and the fact I am on some pretty powerful drugs… the neurologist says it should improve.

January 15th, a Saturday, I slept in and woke up feeling like I had run a marathon, I was exhausted. All I remember is waking up, going to the bathroom, getting some food, and that’s it. Apparently, around 4 pm, my Chinese roommate heard me scream briefly and then heard a thump. At which point he came to my room and saw me laying face into the floor violently shaking from head to toe. Full body convulsions, and I wasn’t responding. Logan had come straight from China and wasn’t too familiar with 911 and my other roommates weren’t in the apartment. He said my face was turning blue and I was having a hard time breathing. He called my other roommate, Christian, without a response… to my luck, he was just walking in the door with his girlfriend who is a soon to be Registered Nurse. By this time Logan is freaking out. He grabs Christian and his girlfriend tells him what to do, ‘lay him on his side, get a pillow, remove all hard objects from the area’ as his girlfriend Ashley calls 911.

Christian was holding my hand trying to get a response out of me as I continued convulsing and Logan began to pray for my life as Ashley waited for the Ambulance outside. According to Christian and Logan, I was foaming at the mouth and blood was coming out of my mouth and nose. My eyes were also dilated so much that they were completely black. Grand Mal seizures are when neurons in your brain are firing randomly and out of control throughout your entire body… this caused my tongue and jaw to tense incredibly fast resulting in me biting pieces out of my tongue. I also had to-the-muscle rug burns on both my feet, my arms and my face. I tore my rotator cuff in my right arm and I keep partially dislocating it if I am not careful.

Okay, back to the story. Once the EMTs arrived I had stopped seizing but was still unconscious and hard to breath. Slowly I came to but was still not responsive. The paramedics helped me to the stretcher where they took me down the elevator and out to the ambulance. What is interesting is that during the State of the Union Address, a memory I hadn’t had was triggered from that night. I remember hearing somebody call my name saying “Can you hear me?” and then asking me, “Who is the President of the United States” and “Where are you right now”? I also remember not being able to answer. I also don’t know who it was that was asking me those questions. I am assuming it was inside the ambulance.

Christian followed me to the hospital in his car while Logan stayed back to answer the questions of the police. When I was in the ER and he was talking to the doctors I went into another seizure while on the stretcher. The nurse then asked if I was kidding… which was kind of wrenching when Christian told me that she asked him this. HELL NO I WASN’T KIDDING!

I was injected with several milligrams of Ativan, a very high potency sedative… normally only about 0.5 mg is needed. At which point I had multiple IVs going into my body with various fluids and during all this they had contacted my parents who were 5 hours away telling them I had been ambulanced to the ER but that was all they could say due to the HIPAA laws. So they were freaking out and frantically packing for an unknown number of days and had to drive 5 hours without any information as to what was wrong with me.

Once stabilized, I was placed into the Intensive Care Unit in the hospital where I was still hooked up to all sorts of monitoring machines. I had multiple XRays, EEGs, MRIs, CT scans going where they found out I also have a bad case of pneumonia. The EEG showed abnormal brain waves that coincided with my diagnosis. While in the ICU, people were finding out about what had happened and calling, texting or facebooking me and apparently I was responding and having full conversations with them… I just have absolute zero memory of it. People also visited me and fortunately I only remember them showing up, but that’s about it. As far as the multi-hour conversations, nada.

After my condition was deemed safe for me to leave the ICU, I was wheel-chaired over to the recovery room where I stayed in a bed for a couple more days. Sorry if my lack of timescale is annoying, for me, most of this isn’t a memory just an account of what happened. I ended up being in the hospital for somewhere around 4 days, not entirely sure though.

My parents were in town for all that I remember because I don’t have the memory of them arriving, just the memory of them randomly being there. It’s sort of hard to explain my amnesia because at the time in the hospital I could tell people what was going on but as time went by, I couldn’t tell them what happened. The best way I can explain it is to say that I knew why I was in the hospital but not how. Almost impossible to think that, but that’s just how it feels.

Once released, I ended up spending about a week with my parents in hotels just to be monitored and to recover. I say hotel(s) because we didn’t know how long my parents needed to stay and since we were using Priceline, we were skipping from hotel to hotel.

All but 1 of my classes was dropped for the semester and I kept not a single problem solving course… which is difficult to say seeings how my major is Aerospace Engineering. The single course is philosophy and it’s just so I can maintain student status and continue with my student loans. I have also been diagnosed by an epileptologist with Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy. Normally it is shown first in young children but because I have always been healthy, it has taken this long to show itself. I have had it all my life and will always have it until I die.

What are the life changing ramifications? Well, for starters I will be on a black box drug the rest of my life. I can’t drink alcohol. I can no longer be in the Air Force or now join any other military branch. It is illegal for me to fly a plane for the rest of my life, this is something I have been doing and been a dream of mine. It is also a required class in my major to fly a plane so I am unsure if I can graduate now because of it. I can’t swim unless heavily supervised and not in choppy water. I cannot drive for 6 months seizure free. 1 of the 3 big sports that I can no longer do is mountaineering, which has been a set life dream of mine (here). My trip to Mt. Rainier this summer has since been canceled. I could keep going but it’s just not healthy to.

It is weird because in both these posts I link below, I talk about things that involve what has now happened just days later. In a recent post I talk about how life is like a train, always moving in a general direction and it’s hard to slow or stop unless something massive derails it… well, my train was just derailed and it’s going to take my life into a total new direction and it will take a while to get it going again. http://iantimberlake.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/why-free-will-makes-your-life-pre-destined/

Also, ironically, I recently posted about the benefits of coconut. Just a week before my seizures I added coconut into my regular diet and on the list of things it helps prevent is epileptic seizures.  http://iantimberlake.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/what-is-the-healthiest-thing-in-the-world-to-eat-that-is-also-a-medicine/

Life throws you screw balls and you just have to learn how to deal with them. This one was a big one for me and will/has changed my life until the day I die. You just need to learn how to manage and roll with it because the alternative is completely unacceptable and just not fun. To be clear, I am the same person now as I was 1 month ago with the exception that I now am informed of the condition I have had all my life. The worst thing is the paranoia in knowing something could happen at any moment and I won’t know it while it’s happening. Thank goodness it just didn’t first happen while I was driving or swimming or alone or I would surely be dead.

Related Articles

• To The Regular Readers, I’m In The Hospital (iantimberlake.wordpress.com)
• Seizures and Other Epilepsy Symptoms (everydayhealth.com)
• Epilepsy in the Workplace (everydayhealth.com)

Unbelievable Life Like Video Games Now Commonplace: Real or Fake?

The line between virtual reality and reality is closing… and when it comes to racing games that don’t involve the rendering of humans and animals, it is almost indistinguishable. Who started it all? Gran Turismo 1. Some of the pictures you see below are real life photographs and others are stills from actual video games. Try and see if you can figure out which ones are real and which are virtual. Answers are at the very bottom of the page as well as a sweet video. Good luck!

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

Answers

1. Virtual, 2. Real, 3. Real, 4. Virtual, 5. Virtual, 6. Real, 7. Virtual, 8. Real, 9. Virtual, 10. Real, 11. Virtual, 12. Virtual, 13. Virtual, 14. Virtual, 15. Real, 16. Virtual, 17. Virtual, 18. Real, 19. Virtual, 20. Real

What Is The Healthiest Thing In The World To Eat That Is Also A Medicine?

No really, this is probably the healthiest item you could be consuming at a freakishly low price. It’s called raw coconut. Don’t stop reading after seeing that last sentence, I am not kidding when I say it is a medicine. In this, you will see exactly why it is the best thing in the world for you to have and they only cost about a buck at the grocery store.

I was walking through my grocery store doing the regular food shopping and I walked passed some coconuts, looked at them, and said,”hmmmm”. Great story right? Well, I was thinking at how I knew coconuts were supposed to be very healthy and I’ve always liked coconut… and I thought it would be fun to sort of mess around with a raw coconut. Essentially, I wanted to stick a straw in it and sip it like I’m on some beach in the Keys when in reality I’m surrounded by feet of snow and -10 temps.

I got back to the apartment and immediately busted into it, took some work (probably comes with practice) but I ended up being able to poke a hole in it. I ended up draining the coconut oil into a little plastic container and boy was there a lot inside this coconut! The color of the oil is clear with a slight yellow hue, almost like sugar water. It’s also very thin, like water.

I ended up scooping out the white goop (there wasn’t much), known as coconut “flesh”. This wasn’t exactly the best thing to eat because it had a snail like texture but it actually tasted like malibu rum! To be clear, the dry coconut you buy in bags in the store is nothing like what is inside of these things. At least the one I got, I think mine was called “sweet young coconut”.

My first drink of it was when I mixed it into a drink of about 1/3 coconut oil and 2/3 orange mango juice. It was SOOO good!! At that moment it became a staple, and I hadn’t even looked up and read the benefits of coconut yet!

It is no joke why coconut has been known as “the tree of life” for centuries. It is a source of meat, oil, milk and juice and is classified as a “functional food” because it provides benefits that are past that of pure nutritional value. According to CoconutResearchCenter.org …

In traditional medicine around the world coconut is used to treat a wide variety of health problems including the following: abscesses, asthma, baldness, bronchitis, bruises, burns, colds, constipation, cough, dropsy, dysentery, earache, fever, flu, gingivitis, gonorrhea, irregular or painful menstruation, jaundice, kidney stones, lice, malnutrition, nausea, rash, scabies, scurvy, skin infections, sore throat, swelling, syphilis, toothache, tuberculosis, tumors, typhoid, ulcers, upset stomach, weakness, and wounds.

That list is pretty much incredible. When I read “bronchitis”, it immediately got me excited because I actually have that right now, bummer, but it’s okay because I know coconut oil will save the day! On that website there is a bullet pointed list of 51 ways modern medicine uses coconut, including; killing viruses, killing bacteria, killing fungi, quick energy, improves insulin secretion, relieves pain, protects against osteoporosis, bolsters immune system, prevents wrinkles and sagging skin, reduces epileptic seizures, promotes weight loss by increasing metabolic rate, prevents weight gain, controls dandruff, natural sunblock, dissolves kidney stones, has zero side affects and is perfectly non-toxic to humans, and so much more.

Coconut has had a bad rap in the past because it is high in fat and calories… but! you can’t look at that because it doesn’t matter. It is the only fatty acid that has a medium length molecule as apposed to a long length molecule, which essentially negates the negatives you know about fats.

Coconut is what you might call a superfood. It is about as perfect as you can get. Make it a daily thing to pour a couple fluid ounces of the coconut oil into your morning OJ or glass of milk. In fact, coconut oil is so versatile you can basically use it for or with anything.

Start living healthier, the next time you’re at the grocery store, buy a REAL raw coconut. They only cost about a buck each and 2 or 3 will last a week… it’s probably the best thing you could ever do for your body outside of exercise.

Resource: http://www.coconutresearchcenter.org/

9.4 G’s & Supersonic In Air Force F16

This is pretty much epic… in case you don’t know, 9.4 G’s is almost 10 times the force of gravity on your body. I weigh 180 lbs, that would make me 1800 lbs during this roll right. Also, supersonic is speeds above the speed of sound (760 mph at sea level), it’s actually uneventful inside the cockpit because you are travelling ahead of the shockwave. Even though his name is Ian, it’s not me, I wish! This is the kind of stuff fighter pilots are used to, maybe someday for myself! Enjoy the video.

The New Type Of Resolution, Throw Yours Out The Window: I’ve Made Mine, What’s Yours?

I always scoffed at new year resolutions. I thought it was silly to think of one thing to change over the course of a year. A lot can and does happen in a year even though hindsight always makes it seem otherwise. And because of this, I always thought it was silly to select one point of improvement. In this article I will tell you what IS important by slightly altering what a new year resolution is commonly thought as, as well as something far more important, a lifetime resolution.

The absolute worst thing you can do as a human is let yourself fall into a groove. You become complaisant as well as passive and you forget that the clock is always ticking. Time is not money, time is more valuable than any commodity on planet Earth, or for that matter, not on planet Earth. If you let your life idly go by, going to the same day-in-day-out job every day, grocery shopping on the same day, doing the same things every holiday… when it comes time to look back on your life, were you truly happy, or just satisfactory? Did you do what you wanted and accomplish things that seemed outlandish at the time? Are you 45 years old right now reading this? What is that regret that I know you have burning inside you where you now think it’s impossible? Here’s a hint: GO DO IT!!! OR GO SUPPORT IT!!! Even if you think it’s impossible.

Here is what your new year resolution should be:

First of all, throw away the whole “I’m going to improve…” new year resolution. That’s bullshit, those are things you work on multiple at a time, all the time. It doesn’t take a new year resolution for that. Your new year resolution should be something that breaks your routine. It needs to be something you can go “do” or “experience”. It needs to be something that almost always requires the sacrificing of something in your regular life to actually accomplish. The most important thing you can do is break your routine and throw some flavor into your life. It’s the same reason your sexual relationship can become mundane, because it’s the same monotonous crap all the time… just like your sex life, throw in some spice, some flavor (okay, maybe flavor was the wrong word to use in that analogy but you get the point).

Once you have done this, write down exactly what it will take to accomplish. How much money, how often, where, how much time, how many, with who, what will I sacrifice? Make this your year’s priority. Do what you need to do to take care of your family’s general needs but keep this resolution a priority. You have one life, you want to live, not just be alive.

Now, take it one step further (when you’re ready). With considerable thought, you should think up a lifetime resolution. A resolution that doesn’t need to be created on the new year, but it must be one that would take years to accomplish. Again none of this “I want to improve… ” crap. Make it something that requires “doing”, years of it. You can make it in conjunction with your new year resolutions, or not. What you need to realize that by “doing”, you will improve on many areas of your life, not just one. That is why regular resolutions are BS compared to this.

For me, my lifetime resolution is something that will be very challenging and take many years for me to accomplish… and chances are I won’t accomplish it. And that is the beauty of it, you just need to do it and put forth the effort. My lifetime resolution is to climb the tallest mountain on all 7 of Earth’s continents, ending with Mt. Everest. This isn’t just a random goal, I’m an avid outdoorsman so it fits my interests. It is something few people in the world have ever done which is what makes it perfect.

So, hopefully you’ll take something away from this… don’t just sweep it under the doormat, this is your life, live it.

- Timbo

Hennessey Venom GT: New Fastest Car In The World? Video

{Update: a man claims to be faster than the Venom GT, click here after this page.}

You really can’t argue with a car that weighs less that 2700 pounds and has over 1200 horsepower to the wheels… what is there to say other than, “I hope you’re wearing your diaper because you just might shit yourself”. No really, this is what you call a true feat of automotive engineering. Hennessey took the Lotus Exige, known for its incredibly small and super efficient aerodynamic design (probably the best in the world) and stuffed a damn hoard of cheetahs under the mid-engine hood. I mean, you’re encroaching on Formula F1 territory with this baby, and it’s street legal!

This baby will do 0-60 mph in just under 2.5 seconds, a formula F1 car will do it in 2 seconds. And if you don’t know anything about Formula F1 race cars, they are the elite in the race world, there is nothing that goes around a track faster. The Venom GT will go from 0-200 mph in 15.9 seconds, whereas the current fastest road legal car in the world, the Bugatti Veyron, takes about 25 seconds to get to that speed. An F1 car will do it in about 10 seconds. The top speed of the Hennessey Venom GT is supposed to be just over 270 mph, which crushes the top speed of an F1 car and just might squeeze out the world record for the fastest car over the new Bugatti Veyron SS version. But don’t worry about getting rear ended by one any time soon… they cost about $900,000 and only 29 of them are to be made, damn! Here, have some candy…

Related Articles

• Jay Leno and the Hennessey Venom GT. (ridelust.com)

To The Summit Of Mt. Rainier 14,411 Ft.

It’s official! I just registered my name on the mountain for June 1st, 2011! I can’t wait. What a great way to kick off the 2011 year. For those of you who don’t know about Mt. Rainier, let me feed you some facts; It is the most prominent mountain in the 48 states. It is a stratovolcano. It is likened to a mountain in the Himalayans. The Muir Snowfield is in the top 10 of North America’s most deadly hiking routes. It has 26 glaciers which cover over 30 square miles of terrain.

To put it simply… this is one mother of a mountain. And just because I say “mother”, does not make it forgiving.

It will take me about 4 days to reach the summit, provided I reach the summit. I will be acclimatizing in the northern cascades for about a week before the climb because the lack of oxygen can be seriously detrimental and just downright annoying when you’re climbing. Things like headaches, stomachaches, vomiting, fatigue, loss of appetite, and dehydration are results of hypoxia which has to do with not be acclimated to the amount of oxygen prevalent at that time. So hopefully my week of hiking through the cascade mountains will help with this when I begin climbing Rainier.

I will be in a 12 person team, most likely we’ll have 3 sub-teams with 4 people on a rope for safety. The climb will not be easy, about 50% of people don’t make the top. High winds and intense storms can pop up out of nowhere, it has been known to snow 2 feet on July 4th. 12 spike crampons are basically required as well as an ice axe. Crevasses and snow bridges are everywhere so it takes a lot of mental strength to make it to the top as well as physical. Especially since Ranier sticks out of the ground higher than the 2nd tallest mountain in the world, K2.

I could continue with the technical stuff but that doesn’t really matter, if you have questions, ask! and I’ll answer! In the mean time, here are some videos for your viewing pleasure.

- Timbo

 

Why Free-Will Makes Your Life Pre-Destined

Our lives are shaped and each railroad tie laid are directly made by every single person we interact with… from mundane to extraodinaire.

From the moment you are born, every interaction you make or don’t make will change the course of your life forever. I will explain how this process essentially predestines where you end up in life.

I personally don’t believe in pre-destiny in the common sense. I believe that each person’s life can change such that there is no such thing as a place you are supposed to end up. It’s a universal law of thermodynamics that things tend to be more random than uniform and I don’t think that changes when referring to outcomes of someones life. Although, it is how you choose to allow this randomness to affect your life.

After some deeper thinking on the subject I’ve come to realize that you essentially create your destiny at a very young age. Not that you are pre-destined but that you are more likely to follow a set of patterns that evidently shape the outcome of where you end up in life.

An analogy I will use is that of a train on a railroad track. Your train departs from the station when you are born and you only get off when you are dead. Along the way people will enter your life, going a similar direction as you but will eventually get off when your life and theirs part ways or when they die. The people closest to you ride this train with you for most of your life. But every decision you make in life, and your interests, behaviors and mannerisms that you learn along the way by these people that join you on your train ride ultimately tell which direction the train will be moving. A train is a large object and it’s difficult to stop, change direction and turn around… this train is always going in a general life direction and will only seriously alter course if something massive happens in your life, usually unexpectedly.

I could detail the train analogy down to every little detail of life but that would take too long. What needs to be understood is that once this train gets moving in a direction, it is very difficult for it to alter it’s course. A child who has a natural ability to design and build things will most likely end up going in the direction of engineer/architect and the people in this child’s life only help but build this quality… once he gets to college and starts to study the subject it is almost guaranteed what field he will get into. If he has an aptitude for being a leader, he’ll probably end up on the management side of the engineering.

The tendencies are endless. Every person we encounter in our life only influences the outcome and strengthens how we understand our own personal abilities… abilities that are founded very early in our childhood.

Like I said, I don’t believe in pre-destiny, but I do believe that very quickly at a young age the scope of your life is quickly narrowed to small area… not necessarily clear, but it’s there. And once the fog clears away, it’s almost inevitable to follow that path.

For example, I am by nature, an introvert. I make up about half of the world population where the other half is extroverted. The difference between being an extrovert and an introvert alone, provides enough incite into where somebody might end up in life, and this is a very very broad personality trait. An extrovert will meet more people and connect to more people in life… they will also converse with more people more often and won’t hide their feelings. An introvert is almost the opposite.

The definition of who we are as a person by the people that help shape us and by our own personal strengths and weaknesses is enough to give us a form of modified destiny. The randomness that I spoke of, above, is still there but it is directed in a certain direction… the train is always moving in a deliberate direction and only gets derailed at a moment in time where what matters in your life suddenly changes.