[nalgas]

Names:
Nalgas D. Lemur

Age:
27

Location:
Boston, MA, USA

Rank and Serial Number...err, Position and Boards:
Rumor has it that I'm one of those admin people these days. I seem to have acquired a spot on the Seizure, Autism, and Anticonvulsant boards at some point too, and I wander around on a few others. I may not post as much as some people, but I try to keep up with my boards and answer stuff when I have something (hopefully) useful to add. I also tend to hang out on IRC fairly often (push the Chat button up at the top).

Diagnoses:
Temporal Lobe Epilepsy: It turns out that some of the things that I used to think were kind of weird were actually seizures, after some testing and consulting with a neurologist. It gets better and worse too. When it's worse, it tends to screw with my memory, and I've had a pretty good variety of strange things happen during my (nearly always complex partial) seizures. These days, they're nearly completely under control, thanks to Keppra.

Asperger's Syndrome: After many, many years (since childhood, basically) of realizing that I was different from most people and taking pride in being a little "weird", it turns out there's a name for the way I am.  Who knew?  Apparently not me, at least not officially until my mid-20s. It certainly explains a bit about some things about me, like some of the social stuff.

Social Anxiety / Anxiety Disorder NOS: People are scary!  A decent amount of this is probably related to Just Not Getting how people work a bunch of the time, which is probably thanks to AS.  It wasn't really an issue when I was young, but by middle school, when everyone else started growing up and having relationships beyond "Can so-and-so come over and play today?" and I didn't, I started having problems, which have continued until this day. The less sure I am about what I'm doing and/or the less well I know the people involved, the more likely I am to lock up and not do anything.

Some Flavor of Depression NOS: I was pretty bad during parts of high school, but since then, I've usually been no more than mildly to moderately depressed most of the time, and I even have had some times when I've been doing ok.  It comes and goes without warning, not really associated with much in particular, except that it does seem to get worse if I'm put in a situation that stresses my ability to deal with the social bit or forces my sleep issues for an extended amount of time (usually for at least a couple months at a time, like getting a job or going to school).

Diagnoses I Don't Actually Qualify for but Have Smiliarities To:
Possible ADD: I don't quite meet enough criteria according to the DSM-IV, but I'm close. I can give most "official" ADD people strong competition for ability to completely arbitrarily jump between a dozen topics in the space of as many sentences, and my psychiatrist talked to my parents at some point about what I was like as a kid and thought it sounded possible after considering that and how I am now. I don't really think I'm quite your typical ADD person, but I have enough similar symptoms along the attention/concentration lines that it makes us wonder sometimes. As time goes by, I become more convinced that it's more likely that a lot of these symptoms are/have been related to my brain being eaten by seizures and medication. It responds well to stims, so in that sense the original cause isn't a huge concern.

Some OCD-ish Tendencies: I may or may not officially qualify for mild OCD.  That hasn't been determined, since it's less of a big deal for me than other things in some ways.  I definitely have Certain Ways some things Have to Be Done, but I don't completely flip out if they're not the right way, just get somewhat botherd.  It bugs me, but not usually a huge amount, although it gets better and worse at times. I've had some issues at times with persistent/recurring thoughts, too. This, too, may potentially just be lumped in with the AS stuff.


Current Meds:
Keppra finally seems to be what works for my seizures without doing anything horrible or intolerable to me otherwise. So far, so good. A fairly low dose of Adderall is showing good signs in helping with focus/concentration/motivation, which is also encouraging. The list of other things that have failed to work for whatever reason continues to grow.

Past Meds:
In no particular order, here goes:
Prozac
Celexa
Zoloft
Wellbutrin
Risperdal
Abilify
Cogentin
Trileptal
Ritalin
Concerta
Klonopin
Neurontin
Topamax
Lamictal
Xanax XR
Ativan
Rozerem
Buspar
Lyrica

With the majority of these, I've had weird or unusual reactions to them, so my personal experience with something is usually not good to base anything on for anyone else.  Trileptal definitely helped a little, but not enough to make up for the side effects.  Ritalin and Concerta were very interesting, but not necessarily good. Possibly even bad.  Rozerem did about much to make my sleep quality worse as it did to make the timing of it more consistent. Topamax was the first one that was more good than bad and worth staying on for an extended period of time, but it eventually stopped being useful and started causing problems. Xanax is the only thing that's even touched my anxiety, but even a tiny, tiny dose puts me to sleep for most of the day. Everything else was pretty much just straight up bad.  Yeah, my brain is special, kind of like a lot of people's around here, it seems.

Other Treatments:
My current diet is a bitch and a half, but it makes my GI system happier, and my seizures have been severely reduced since around the time I started it, which is yet to be determined as coincidental or not. I am not eating dairy, gluten, shellfish, or nightshades (tomatoes, potatoes, peppers of any kind, and eggplant), and I try to avoid artificial dyes, soy, and caffeine. I can probably eat some of those things just fine, but I haven't had a stable enough period without meds or other things changing for long enough to try reintroducing them one at a time and find out. I'm at least certain about the dairy, shellfish, and peppers, though.

My light box experiment was a failure. It kind of weirded me out and did strange things to my brain. Maybe something else will work instead of it.

Expertise and Interests:
I don't have much formal expertise, but I'm interested in almost everything.  I know a little bit about a whole lot of things, want to find out more about all of them, and have a habit of absorbing knowledge like a sponge.  I tend to be good to have around on trivia night.  As far as being useful on CrazyBoards, I know enough about most things to be able to have an opinion on what to do about something or to throw out some facts or anecdotal evidence here and there or to direct people to someone/somewhere more useful. I've picked up a bunch of stuff about seizures, autism/Asperger's, and several meds (particularly some of the ones I've taken and anticonvulsants in general) during my time here, a lot of which has been through my own reading/research to better understand what's been going on with me, so that comes in handy.

As far as other stuff goes, I'm a big dork.  I'm a computer person, and I've had a programming job or two in the past, but I wouldn't consider my knowledge to be anywhere above skilled amateur at this point, since I haven't kept up with everything as well as I would've liked.  I'm also a music person.  I've been playing classical piano on and off for the past couple decades, and I've played the bass in a rock band on and off for about five years (mostly off lately). I'm pretty big on games, too, in any form (video, board, pen and paper), and have a bit of experience designing/creating them.

Mostly I just like anything involving new (to me) ideas, whether it's history or philosophy or physics or cooking or whatever. I will read, listen to, watch, or do anything that seems potentially interesting, and I can get along with most people; I just have issues actually getting myself to do things instead of thinking about doing them a lot of the time, but give me some prodding in the right direction and I'll be good to go.

As people from the old Springer board may remember, I still seem to be a bit wordy at times on the boards, compared to chat.  Maximum verbosity!  Free cookie* if you've made it this far without falling asleep.

* Disclaimer: Free cookie may not actually contain cookie.  Do not taunt happy fun cookie.

This post has been edited by nalgas: 30 March 2009 - 04:43 PM