In a surprise move, regular Two-Timer (ADHD and Common Migraine) Jon Singer made a grab today at the coveted "Triple Threat" title, claiming a preliminary diagnosis of Complex Partial Seizures, formerly known as Temporal Lobe Epilepsy.
Contacted at the laboratory complex of Doug Humphrey's Banzai Institute, in Laurel, Maryland, Singer noted that the apparent seizure of a week and a half ago does not seem to have been his first, and indicated that he may even seek Triple status retroactively.
"About two years ago," he said, "I had a session of perhaps 45 minutes' duration, chasing these dreamy elusive images that I couldn't quite grasp or recall. It was like waking from a dream and trying to remember the content. You know? -- You think you can tell what a particular image from the dream is about, and it seems quite strong; but when you try to catch it, it just dissolves like smoke. The difference is that this went on and on and on, through seemingly endless sequences of images and feelings that I just couldn't quite catch. It eventually became an astonishingly frustrating and tiring treadmill. If I remember right, I finally escaped it by going to sleep."
The recent incident began with several minutes of a very similar sequence of images, though less powerful and much shorter in duration.
Singer said he'd concluded, two years back, that the problem was an interaction between Ritalin and chocolate; but that crude hypothesis was placed in serious doubt by the fact that he hadn't had either for several days before the recent incident.
The bruised conjecture was then entirely despatched on Tuesday, when he described both events to Dr. Yvette Oquendo. "Hmmm. Sounds like Temporal Lobe Epilepsy to me," she said, casually shattering his half-baked notions of Transient Ischemic Attack or food poisoning, and leaving him speechless for a near-record 2.4 seconds.
"Other than the fact that I forgot almost everybody's name and felt like a pile of whipped dogshit from about 6 pm until 10 or so, it wasn't all _that_ bad," said Singer, who described the seizure as including two very short attacks of nausea, early on, that were associated with strong emotional and other imagery and with powerful olfactory hallucinations. "The smells were just there," he said. "They were interesting, but as far as I can remember they didn't actually contribute to the nausea at all. I was pretty sure they weren't real. If I hadn't felt like a dishrag at the time, I would have been pretty excited."
Asked about the imagery and emotional content, Singer wryly observed that the nausea had dominated that second part of the experience (which began about half an hour after the initial dreamy image sequence), and said he was, unhappily, unable to recall olfactory specifics. As to the short prodrome, he said, "One of the hallmarks of this kind of imagery is that although it seems powerful at the time, that's illusory in the functional sense that it's fleeting and ungraspable. What can you say about some idea you only almost had? One is left with an impression of intensity, but it entirely lacks substance -- 'there's nothing _there_ there.' It is to grit the teeth."
He said he had written a fragmentary report on his Web journal page during the latter part of the seizure. "It ain't much," he said, sighing. "I wanted to give a rich description, because the early part had seemed like a fairly rich experience, but of course it was a vapor, a will-o'-the-wisp. Also, by the time I tried to write I wasn't in any shape to do it justice -- most of what was going on was the fact that I couldn't remember names, and felt crumpled."
At no time during the entire seizure did he panic or even feel any particular fear. This contrasts sharply with many CPS reports, which tend to feature unpleasant emotions.
Questioned about his short-lived agnosia, he said it was quite a puzzlement. "I had to find my Molecular Biology mentor's phone number by going through the listings in my cell phone until I found three in a row, one of which was a laboratory phone. I knew that had to be her -- she's the only 'Lab' listing I have. I didn't recognize her first name at all, and was astonished to discover that her last name begins with the letter 'F'. At that point, if I had been entirely with it, I'd have dialed 911 immediately; but I was sufficiently off center that it didn't occur to me to do so."
Singer reports that he has been consulting, over the past few days, with Platinum Crown holder Charlie Golder, of Seattle (dendritic inoperable Group 2 or 3 Oligodendroglioma that crosses the cerebral midline, is not a gamma knife candidate, and basically amounts to nyaah-nyaah-nyaah-you're-fucked), about Bad Possibilities and How to Deal with Them, on a 'Just in Case' basis.
Golder, whose tumor recently began to grow after some years of stasis, is actually in surprisingly good shape after two sessions of chemotherapy. He was not initially considered to be a good chemotherapy candidate because his tumor was static, and would not have taken up chemotherapeutic drugs, or at least that's how I recall the explanation of a couple years ago. Histological evidence suggests otherwise, however, and in addition the tumor started to grow; it now appears to be responding to Temozolomide. [Uhh, What? notes that this info is secondhand, may contain various inaccuracies or misperceptions, and should be taken with a grain or two of salt.]
Final confirmation of Singer's new status awaits MRI (and probably EEG) testing. With two apparent seizures behind him, however, and the MRI scheduled for this coming Monday, Singer is already at least halfway to Triplex status, and now moves into the home stretch. He isn't just resting in his Laurel, though. Uhh, What? found him at work in the ceramics lab, spreading out clay samples to dry so he could later sift them and send them out for analysis. He also continues to prepare to build a gas kiln and several lasers.
For the most part upbeat, he expressed some delight at the prospect of meeting one of his favorite elements (gadolinium) on an up-front-and-personal basis, saying that he's thinking about making a "Go with Gd" bumper-sticker; but behind the usual intrigued front he appeared to this reporter to be deeply unsettled and badly frightened. Even if the MRI fails to reveal anything, the questions of "What's driving this?" and "Why now?" remain open, as does the issue of treatment. Uhh, What? expects to provide further reports as information becomes available.
-- 30 --
(I may actually put this report on my Web journal, but I want to get Charlie's permission before I do anything quite that public with it.)
Cheers (we hope) --
jon
PS: Bit of a reference, in case anyone wants it.
Pseudo-mailto: jon [at] bazilians [put it here] org
Last modified: Fri May 12 22:38:39 PDT 2000