Hello everybody! My name is Isabel. I'm an 18 year-old female who had a seizure (tonic-clonic type seems to most closely match descriptions I heard) out of nowhere just under four weeks ago, New Year's Eve morning. According to my neurologist, my CT scan and MRI were apparently abnormal (some sort of collection of calcium towards the front of my brain, as well as a Chiari malformation). Also, my EEG results indicate generalized epilepsy (my maternal uncle was also diagnosed in his late teens, though he hasn't had symptoms in something like three decades now). Man, I've got all sorts of problems. 😛

Since I've only had one seizure, I guess I can't be formally diagnosed yet. I'm not on medication, and my 6-week waiting period before resuming driving lessons is more than halfway over. However, since then I've had occasional periods of what I guess could be considered confusion. It's a little hard to describe, but sometimes I just feel like I can't believe I and the things around me exist. Like someone took me to this strange place and wiped my memory of how I got there. Everything seems so strange all of a sudden, and after a couple/few minutes I'm back to normal. I'll normally start telling myself my name, my date of birth, etc. to prove to myself that I'm not going crazy. Just now I was drawing and I had a particularly strange episode--I got up to get myself a drink, and realized I forgot where the kitchen was. I thought it was behind a door, and when I realized I was wrong, I realized I couldn't remember what WAS behind that door. I've been living in this house since 2009 (minus the four months I was away in college), so it scared the living tar out of me. That's possibly even WEIRDER is that I don't really remember it. This too is hard to put into words, but it almost seems like it was a dream. I KNOW it happened, I KNOW I stood up and looked at that brown wooden door, trying to remember what was behind it, but I don't remember physically getting up and doing said things... ugh, you know what I mean?

I started frantically Googling confusion and epilepsy, which brought me here. According to this site temporary confusion can in fact be a symptom of epilepsy. However, I have apparently been epileptic my whole life, yet it took eighteen years to show any symptoms that we know of. I don't drink or do drugs or anything of the sort. Why is this starting now? Could it have something to do with my seizure, like maybe I bumped my head or something? Does anyone else experience anything like this? I'm kind of concerned right now, as you can probably imagine.