Ben: A couple of tablets that they prescribed me, one of them had serious side effects to the point where they caused serious psychiatric problems and I ended up in a psychiatric ward for three days so they could sort of keep me safe and give me the necessary care that I needed to flush it out of my system.
Dad: The general opinion is that it was sparked off because of lack of sleep. The tablets that they tried him on kept him awake, I think for about, something like about, you'd been pretty well awake for about 72 hours hadn't you?
Ben: Yeah, at least.
Dad: He developed this, they diagnosed it as…oh what was it.. Anxiety Psychosis, that's it.
Ben: It was difficult as well because when it started off, when I just sort of noticed that things weren't right and I wasn't getting enough sleep and I was a bit edgy, one doctor suggested that it was probably just due to I'm getting used to the tablets. So one idea was to double the dose. I mean obviously any sensible person would take me off of them but, no he was quite sure that it was a case of doubling the dose. Which obviously really went tits up, and caused worse and worse trouble, insomnia was a serious problem. Anxiety, everything about me just changed completely, my friends noticed. But now we've gone through all of that and it finished off with me in the psychiatric ward and basically they said, “Look it's not right, it can't be done this way.” I managed to recognise the early signs when they put me on other tablets if they were gonna work or not, and I kind of got to the point where I had to decide myself. Luckily I've got friends who were noticing. I'd say to them, “Right they started me on a new tablet now, can you sort of keep an eye on me, from the outside?”. They'll be quite discreet about it, but at the same time get to the point, so if I'm being edgy with them, they'll say. Which is very, very handy, they're very good to me, I think especially with the seriousness. But all the different tablets they tried, I'm able now to notice things like the insomnia, the anxiety, and now I've got more contact numbers and people that I can call. Nurses that I can speak to, to say, “Look is this right? this is what I'm experiencing, I've just started these tablets up.” And they give me some feedback as to whether or not it's a good idea to carry it on, or whether to stop them.
Now they're gonna start me on a new type of tablet soon, but they're running out of tablets to give me so they're going for the mix of tablets, see what happens then, which could be quite interesting. But the whole aspect in general about tablets is a big… to be honest I think it's more of a problem for me than the epilepsy itself. I've managed to pretty much deal with the epilepsy, accept the facts, have a laugh about it in certain cases. But with the tablets you don't know what's gonna come up, you don't know whether you're gonna be in a psychiatric ward or you're gonna not be able to sleep for 72 hours, whether you're not gonna be, you know, end up being all nasty to your friends, edgy with people, it's difficult. I think that's probably the worst out of all of it. |