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The decision will involve weighing the risk of more seizures against the risk of side effects from the drugs.

Weigh the risks of having a seizure while crossing a street and being hit by a car, or risk the side effects of the drugs.

Weigh the risks of having a seizure while taking a shower and splitting your skull wide open, or risk the side effects of the drugs.

It’s a no brainer. Take the drugs. I had 4 grand mals before the damn VA doctors finally prescribed Dilantin for me. When I had them there was no chance to sit down or drab something. Down I went, and the crack of my head against the floor could be heard 100 feet away. Better to live with the drugs side effects than suffering major brain damage and ending up a drooling mess in a wheelchair. When I had one and was taken to the VA, I had a big laceration on my scalp where my head hit the floor. Damn VA nurses didn’t even clean it or put a bandage on it. Woke up with blood all over the pillow and my head stuck to the pillow.

Hate to say it but almost all epileptics need a friend or two ~ so I did the friend thing a few times ~ old family custom to do this for folks with brain issues, retardation, illness ~

Not to digress but one fellow who came across our lives was a photocopier salesman who had his first epileptic seizure riding a bicycle on a sidewalk at rush hour near a busy street.

He said he spent several months in the hospital ~ on dilantin ~ then a predecessor to depakote (does same stuff but pretty rough on your system)

Traffic is a really tough environment for a seizure.

I was in a head-on on the highway on my motorcycle in 72. GM seizures in 73. I was put on Dilantin and Tegretol. I was part of a study of Tranxene which was rejected for seizure control except it "worked" for me. Over the next 10 years or so I got progressively less able to function mentally. I got to where I could not make a decision. I just drifted into things. I could not hold a job. In 84 I went on a 2 week commercial fishing trip that lasted 6 weeks and I ran out of meds. I did not have a seizure until my first night home in bed. Without the meds I got a glimmer of thought and realized i had to decide whether to continue the drugs and slowly disappear in the fog or get off the meds and have the seizures. I managed to decide to taper off. Bad decision. I should have just quit. I tapered for a year with my wife controlling the taper. I finally got enough mental acuity back to be able to stop altogether. By 88 I was experiencing elation whenever I could see how a mechanism works or how to fix something, how things go together. By 95 or so I was able to argue politics again. I still had to read a text several times before I could remember what I read. I had one more seizure a month after that night after the fishing trip. The seizures themselves cause some of the same effects as the medicine.

Some traumatically induced epilepsy can heal slowly but once one is medicated for seizures a doctor will not allow one off the meds because if then one has an accident of any sort one can claim a seizure and sue the doctor.