Sixteen Tons!

"You load sixteen tons, and waddaya get? Another day older and deeper in debt! St. Peter dontcha call me 'cos I can't go: I owe my soul to the company Sto'!"

So, gee, it's been nearly a year since I last posted here.

I was going to title it "Yet another shoe dropping", but, I dunno, I guess I got tired of that brand.

Oh, yeah, why the title? Thanks for asking! Well, after all this time, I am on the verge of GETTING OUT OF DEBT! I have been on a program for the last six years or so to pay off my credit card balances - at one time up to $33K! - I have already paid off two of them, with three to go. Two of them will be done end of December, and the last one in January! HAPPY NEW YEAR! :cheesygrin:

Turns out Peter DOES have epilepsy all along, as a COMPETENT medical observer could have told two years ago. What looked to me like a grand mal seizure the morning of the Malaysian Tsunami was just that!

Oh, the clonazepam did actually dampen out the electrical activity, but it's not a drug one can use long-term.

The turning point in this saga came one morning as I was saving, running late getting to work, and the phone rang. It was Peter's friend Liz telling me that she had called 911 because she found Peter had fallen in their bathtub. I wish that she had called me FIRST, because there was no point in ANOTHER expensive visit to the emergency room, but the die was cast, so to speak.

Anyway, what made this a turning point was that, later, Peter told me that he REMEMBERED fallling! Ergo, he was NOT sleepwalking when the attack occurred!

Ah, yes, the steeltrap mind snaps shut!

So, now that we have insurance, I go and look for a nearby Neurologist that is in my PPO.

Long story short, after her tests, the diagnosis is crystal clear: Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy.

The "Sleep Doctor", with his M.D. and Ph.D. I now regard as a "quack".

Still, my being misled was partly my own damn fault - I didn't want to THINK he had epilepsy, so I found a way NOT to for a while.

Anyway, the rather expensive non-generic medication seems to work just fine, with no noticeable side effects, and MOST of the time Peter takes them as directed, although not without some urging on my part.

Who knows. Maybe it's a good thing: If they reinstitute the draft, they might not take him becasue of this lifelong chronic incurable condition!