kerzain
3581
This didn’t happen to me exactly, but I’m still processing exactly what went down.
I was talking to my life-long best friend tonight on the phone. He lives 900 miles away, we grew up together and although we haven’t seen each other in a while we know each other better than anybody but our significant others.
A couple hours into the conversation he started talking nonsense and started making choking and smacking noises. He has a history of seizures (which started to occur about five years ago when he was 30, but I haven’t ever witnessed one since we’ve lived pretty far apart for many years). Last Sunday he had a gran mal seizure after feeling strange all day Saturday. The last gran mal he had was three years ago and didn’t see these signs for what they were. Apparently he has petite mal seizures all the time (that manifest themselves as an itchy face, confusion or talking nonsense when he thinks he’s making perfect sense or in a variety of other ways), and it seemed like he started having one while we were on the phone.
He works in a call center and he started talking to me like he thought he was at work and I was a customer and he was really confused. I had to hang up on him and call the local emergency services to go check on him, and by the time they got there he was back to 90%, making almost complete sense, but sounding really slurry and very tired. Just after they checked him out and recommended he get some rest, they started to leave when he started having another gran mal seizure right in front of them and they carted him off to the hospital. It kills me that he had to wait as long as he did for emergency services to arrive, and that I couldn’t be there to take him to the hospital sooner.
Apparently he is supposed to be okay. The doctors haven’t labeled him as an epileptic although this is his fifth gran mal in 5 years (three occurred within the fist two years, and then none for three years until these two). His first ever seizure occurred while he was driving on the freeway causing him to crash into a cement barrier, but leaving him unharmed from the accident (he no longer drives because of the unpredictability of his seizures). I don’t know exactly what is wrong with him (the doctors just call is some sort of seizure syndrome, but not epilepsy just yet), but he’s apparently already taking max dosage for some drug called diazepam(sp?).
I doubt this is all really very interesting, but I just needed to vent. I feel helpless 900 miles away, even though there’s apparently not much I can do to help him anyway.
Juste
3582
That’s harsh Kerzain. My sympathies. Still, where would he have been if you hadn’t been there to call the emergency services? I’m guessing you might have saved his life.
I just ordered myself a customized laptop. The reason why this is so significant is because every computer I’ve ever owned (except for the netbook I got in August) has been a hand-me-down. December 10th (expected delivery date) can’t come soon enough! (I’m so glad I had some of my college financial aid check left over for this. My last laptop died last weekend, and I didn’t know what I was going to do for next semester…)
Same here. Got it wednesday though. So excited!
jpinard
3585
Kerzain, has he had brain scans where they try and induce the seizure and then medicate him appropriately? I’m wondering if his doctor has done everything he can if he has these at the frequency he does - there are quite a few other meds that have seizure control. M wife went through this when she was younger. She had a grand mal in the shower, fell into her face, cut her lip open and destroyed her front teeth.
kerzain
3586
The only scans I know they’ve taken were strictly intended to find tumors or some sort of brain damage, which turned out clean. He hasn’t mentioned anything about them trying to forcibly induce the seizures, and he is scheduled to see his regular doctor tomorrow to see about getting his medication changed since they’re already unhappy with the amount of diazepam they have him on.
I know he also takes an extra half-tablet of his medication (no idea of the actual dosage) when he thinks he feels something coming on (he did this Saturday night), and the ER doc he saw at the hospital on Sunday was strongly (and candidly) suggested that he needs to get his meds changed asap.
I think the reason he’s been on this for five years, and they’ve been routinely upping the dosage rather than changing the actual drug, is because this one is supposed to play nicer with other meds and have less intrusive side effects than a couple of the alternatives. It doesn’t look like he’s going to have a choice in the matter though if the current stuff just isn’t working any more. He mentioned he might have been building a resistance to it.
Omniscia
3587
That sounds somewhat like a problem one of my sisters’ friends has. She was fine for years, but recently began having random seizures, without a diagnosis of epilepsy. In her case, they traced it back to a childhood case of meningitis that apparently scarred the wrong brain tissue.
Eilonwy
3588
Woke up at 5 am to get ready to head up to a coffee shop that had finally given the go ahead for us to film. We were supposed to meet the other actor there at 7. By the time 8:30 rolled around, the cafe had gotten far too busy for us to do anything useful and we still hadn’t seen the other guy. The owner finally asked us (very nicely) if we could come back at 4 pm when it was less busy. Finally got a hold of the other actor who acted all put out that we had to change the time since HE WAS FUCKING LATE.
Fucking actors!
Lorini
3589
I can’t stand prima donnas, one of the reasons I’d never be in that business. Ugh.
Eilonwy
3590
Thanksgiving is an interesting time, apparently. My aunt hosted a dinner in Plymouth this year. Bunches of my cousins (I have like 40 of them) went. I did not since I thought what with my mom having moved out of state this year I’d make dinner for my sister and her boyfriend. She ended up getting a cold and staying home, and then my dinner was late (who knew a turkey took so long to cook?) so I hemmed and hawed about going down to Plymouth for dessert and ultimately decided against it since it was late and I had to be up at 5 am the next day.
Turns out that during dinner, my aunt stood up abruptly and motioned for her son-in-law (an ER doctor) to go with her into the next room. She was having chest pains. Without telling anyone, he took her from the house and got her to the hospital where she had the actual heart attack. But because it’s the holidays, apparently they’re short staffed so they’ve been waiting until today for someone to come in and tell them what needs to be done, and she probably can’t have any procedures till Tuesday.
No one at the dinner had any idea this went on until the next day when she didn’t come down for breakfast. Her daughter (my cousin) is pregnant with her third kid and is spending all her time at the hospital and I’m watching her two boys (three and two) off and on while everyone scrambles.
Griddle
3591
Went to a party at a friends house, met alot of new folks, and started a fight club sort of. Well, what happened is one of the guys there was really cool, and we got to talking outside with the rest of the folks around the fire. Then we all decided it would be hilarious taking turns punching the living fuck out out of each others faces. We were laughing so hard that I got decked and did a faceplant on the concrete and was bleeding down my face. Best part is when I got up I managed to punch one of the guys so hard he puked. Gotta love random stupidity.
The best part is, I didn’t drink anything besides ice water, all the concentrated stupid was sober, HA!
tiohn
3592
Dear Diary,
Remind me to never, ever hang out with Griddle.
Griddle sounds like a baller.
So this may not qualify as interesting to anyone but myself, but I did a Ghostbusters tour of NYC on Friday. As background info, for the last few years my wife and I have stayed in Seattle for Thanksgiving and visited family at Christmas. I resist changing this because traveling over the holidays is kind of hell. But she talked me into it, and I said I would go with her to visit her family in New Jersey if I could take a day in NYC to check out Ghostbusters sites. And by god, we did.
We took the NJ transit train into Penn Station and decided to start with a cab ride down to the southern end of Manhattan to visit the fire station the Ghostbusters made into their office – if you haven’t checked this out, it’s still a functioning fire department so you can’t actually tour it, so we had our confused cab driver pull over while we took quick photos. Then it was back up to the Museum of Natural History (ok, not Ghosbusters related, I just wanted to check it out) and then we walked a few blocks south along Central Park to the apartment building that Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis lived in that was the conduit to Zuul’s entry to our world. By pure luck, it was lunch time and my wife suggested walking across the street to Tavern on the Green, which is the restaurant that Moranis ran across the street pursued by the demon dog, the one with the glass-enclosed dining area, before he was caught and key mastered. This may surprise no one but me, but it is an actual restaurant that is across the street from the actual apartment building. I guess I’m just too used to movie magic putting locations next to each other.
Last we stopped by the NYC library where the guys tried (unsuccessfully) to catch the librarian ghost. I didnt’ go in, unfortunately we had to catch the train back for other family stuff, but it was a great whirlwind tour. I have pics I can post if anyone is interested.
kerzain
3595
^Interested in the pics.^ I grew up watching Ghostbusters.
BTW, I like the use of a Ghostbuster tour as a bargaining chip for holiday visits.
Do you remember the possum (not an oppossum) we rescued a while back? He looked like this…
We called him Bugalugs. Well, his unfortunate life story came to an end the other day. Let me recap.
We found his mother flattened by a car several months ago. My wife peeled her off the road and discovered her pouch was alive. Not with maggots, but with Bugalugs! We rescued him, and fed the remains of his mother to one of our crocodiles. Heartless perhaps, but waste not want not. We raised Bugalugs as our own, and he found his way into our hearts. Aww. But then we had to travel interstate for a work trip, and we realised we just couldn’t hang onto him. We gave him to a good friend of ours who rehabilitates possums and releases them back into the bush. Fair go, we thought.
So off Bugalugs goes to his new home, eventually independent enough to be released gradually back into the bush. He revisits the house every few days for several months, often scurrying around the roof at night.
A few days ago, Bugalugs disappeared and there was an awful smell coming from the roof. Our friend investigated his loft and found a very large carpet python dead and slowly festering. It would appear that he ate Bugalugs, but became so engorged with possum that he couldn’t squeeze back out of the hole in the wall, got stuck there during the day and cooked under the tin, possum and all.
Poor Bugalugs! :( What a life, eh?
So, I came to post a small tidbit from my little life, but I think I’ll wait until we reach a new page of this thread. Who can beat rotting pythons in the attic.
(we’re talking about a family trip to Oz in 3-5 years time depending on funds, and I’ve convinced the missus we have to see Smaug and family… I will not relate this story since she’s scared shitless of snakes)
Griddle
3599
Not at all, as a matter of fact I’m a video game nerd, just seemed like a good idea at the time. :)
Yeah, put up some pics in a separate thread.
