The deja vu I experience is a type of aura that sometimes precedes an epileptic seizure. For me, the deja vu will be followed by an absence seizure or sometimes resolve itself without losing consciousness. Either way it is a really strange and intense feeling. I don’t think it’s related to my BG level but I really haven’t paid too much attention to it. My epilepsy is really well controlled with medication so the seizures i experience are very few and far between.
“An aura is a perceptual disturbance experienced by some with migraines or seizures . The aura stage precedes a seizure in epilepsy but can happen at any stage of a migraine. It often manifests as the perception of a strange light, an unpleasant smell, or confusing thoughts or experiences.”
@El_Ver, interesting. I always wondered if when I crashed my car it was a seizure, low BG, or some combination of the two. But, I suspect it was some mish-mashed combination because my BG was 60-something. I got tunnel vision, went blind, but never lost consciousness.
@Paytone, do you think the epilepsy meds have anything to do with memory problems? I was always too nervous about epilepsy meds to take them. LOL, its really hard to get a BG during a seizure. Just not the right state of mind. Before a seizure, I usually get a heart rate around 180 and start having difficulty breathing, and sometimes think I’m about to have a heart attack. But, its happened at work and I made the guys run an EKG. Super high heart rate and panic, but no bad rhythm, fortunately. Thanks for the input!
I rarely loose consciousness, but if I do, its bad and I’m hospitalized for days.
I wouldn’t put much weight in an endo’s indifference to symptoms like this. It does not undermine your perception of this symptom. I think your reaching out here to the patient community is one way to develop an understanding of what’s going on and hopefully learn some tactics to help you cope.
I think many of us must live with memory lapses, especially as we age with long-term diabetes. I’ve been traveling the last several days and I made several mental errors. I left my smart phone in a public restroom, something I’ve done before – you’d think I could learn to pre-empt that behavior.
As I was dropped off curb-side at the airport yesterday, I left my phone on the back seat of the car. Luckily my friend did a quick survey and found it before we parted. The seat was black and so was my phone and case. I think I’ll go and buy a red case to help me visually keep track of my phone.
I had the memory problems before I was on epilepsy meds. That and the deja vu episodes were the reason I went to a neurologist. My neuro selected a anti-seizure med that’s not supposed to impact memory (Lamictal), but you never know…
Really sorry to hear about your seizure experiences. Scary I’m sure.
I’ve found that it’s helpful to set up my oral meds once a week in one of those plastic boxes which is divided up into one little cell a day, or two, or whatever. I set them up once a week, and then I can tell just by looking in the little cell if I’ve taken all of my pills for that hour or not. If it’s not there, I’ve taken it.
Whenever I leave the house, I attach my smartphone to a long plastic lanyard attached (via a loop through the red case) to my belt loop. I then put the phone in my pocket. The lanyard is long enough so that if I really want to I can talk on the phone without releasing it. My glucometer is hooked up via its case to the same lanyard.
And so far I have managed to integrate all of these workarounds into my life without making myself feel like a cripple.
"Do you have any pictures of this setup? Does it require a specific case for the lanyard to attach?"
Almost every case has some kind of opening near the top for a microphone or some kind of sensor. If not, you can easily make one in the spine of the case. I’ve done it, and I’m not very good at things like this.
The loop of string in this photo is ugly, but in the past I’ve prettified the setup by using gold colored string you can get in a wrapping supply store. Depending on the case, you could also use a lady’s silver or gold-plated anklet or a little girl’s gold colored bracelet.
I take about ten or twelve pills in the morning, including some man-eaters, and four in the evening, all man-eaters. See @Firenza’s images. Mine don’t come from Amazon, just from a local (giant) drugstore. There are a lot of older people in the world now, and the drugstores consider us good customers, so they stock these things.
the size of the 300mg Lyrica is why I asked for 3x 100mg gabapentin. Much easier to get down. I get 540/month which which is a huuuge bottle, but less cost to me as they are a generic and way easier to swallow one at a time.
Thanks for your pictures, @MapleSugar. I’ve just put in place a tether that I hope will work.
I bought some small diameter round woven line and a small and medium Nite Ize brand double-gated carabiners from REI. I taped a six inch segment of the line to the back of the phone with some packing tape and then added my red case. I’m not thrilled with this attachment but it appears to work for now.
I then used a 36 inch length of the same small line with a fishing loop knot tied in each end. I attached the larger of the two double-gated carabiners for attachment at a belt loop. This way I could carry my phone in my rear or front pocket.
A staff member at REI told me that her smartwatch will vibrate on her wrist whenever she separates from her phone. I went looking for this app and discovered that this function is not native to iOS and an app that used to contain it, Lookout, no longer does.
This seems like a fairly straight-forward function and I’m surprised that this doesn’t appear to be implemented yet.
My experience is that I gradually work the little kinks out of my workarounds, over time.
As to the old Lookout function, I don’t know if it has to be embedded. I don’t know Apple devices, but if I search for things like “anti-loss bluetooth” or “anti-theft bluetooth” in Google Store some manual elbow-grease filtering produces a short list of apps which use Bluetooth to make the phone start to scream if it gets too far away from some paired Bluetooth device, either proprietary or preexisting. A pairing with your keyring, for example, should provide some protection for both.
Myself, I would still trust the tether idea more, though, especially since the effective distance for a Bluetooth connection is VERY variable.
