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Trouble Afoot; epilepsy and driving, part 1

 

Can I go home now?

 

Pocono Medical Center isn’t a Big City TV Hospital; the ER is almost serene. Like all emergency rooms though, no one really wants to be here. But no, my neurologist says, I can’t go home. Then he pronounces his diagnosis: possible epilepsy.

 

I’m so sick I can hardly talk. My wife Mary Ann starts to ask questions as I reel with the doctor’s words. I can only half listen. This is no appendectomy, which I’ve had, no dirt bike broken bone, ditto ditto ditto, good for later bragging rights, perhaps. My friend has adult-onset epilepsy. He has been unable to drive ever since.

 

This is inconceivable. This can’t be happening. I’m a car guy. I have the car gene. It was only a few hours ago, as I sat contemplating a pleasant drive in a cool car, that all this started.

 

The late summer dappled sunlight was dancing on the bright blue hood of the new Porsche 911 in my driveway. Porsche Cars North America calls it Riviera Blue. It’s the jelly bean color from the TV commercial but I think of it as the color of the Pinto I had owned in the early ‘70s. The Porsche wasn’t mine, but I’d have it for a week. It’s one of the benefits of being an automotive journalist—one is allowed, no, persuaded—to drive all sorts of exotic and even ordinary cars.

 

Although this was the newest model, the flat six made a familiar thrum at idle. The old VW Beetle-like floor-mounted pedals, still felt goofy underfoot at first. The dashboard was improved, but still archaic. “Yes,” I thought. “The Stuttgart loyalists will be happy in here.”

 

Except for this pungent, almost overwhelming aroma of leather, like burying your face in a new baseball mitt. Whose idea was that?

 

Then things got really weird. The powerful feeling of déjà vu (understandable perhaps in a 911) gave way to a profound sadness, a deep melancholy that made no sense whatever. I didn’t have time for that, I shook it off, turned off the car, and started to walk toward the house. Then…

 

There’s a real sense of bewilderment as you start regaining consciousness when you attempt to gather the facts.

 

 

I didn’t feel particularly chipper the rest of the afternoon, but after dinner, we decided to go out for ice cream. I started the car, buckled up and commented to my wife, Mary Ann, on how odd it was that Porsche had so little changed the 911’s interior. Then I felt weird, and said so.

 

I was out, limp, motionless and staring vacantly at the headliner. It lasted no longer that the few seconds it took Mary Ann to call my name, shake me and then reach across the steering wheel to turn off the ignition. Thank goodness the car was in neutral. As I came around for the second time, I knew that even Real Men have to go to the Emergency Room sometimes.

 

Mary Ann drove our Aerostar to the hospital. I rode. The right side of the minivan would soon become my assigned spot on the road.

 

Sitting in the obligatory wheel chair, I waited in cardiac for an empty space. Because of Paul’s experience, I had already suspected—and feared—a diagnosis of epilepsy. When it became clear that the doctors shared this suspicion, I was no less crushed for having expected it. The next three days as an inpatient consisted mostly of waiting, punctuated only by tests that would determine why an otherwise healthy 46-year old male had gone down like a fainting goat.

 

A CAT scan (and later MRI) showed no tumor, embolism or hemorrhaging. I made a lot of lame jokes about then finding nothing in my head, An initial electroencephalogram revealed normal brain waves but a second EEG would be more definitive. They induced sleep deprivation and hyperventilation—shining a strobe light into my face more closely than I ever remember in the ‘60s—all in attempts to provoke a seizure. My nervous anticipation was replaced by relief when the technician indicated that I had “passed” the test. Only normal brain waves.

 

Absolutely! I was so normal I could ski the Bell curve. “Thank God,” I thought, “I’m cleared, I’m okay. No epilepsy.”

 

But no. According to my neurologist, epilepsy doesn’t work that way. A normal pattern now doesn’t mean that it hadn’t been abnormal earlier. Or wouldn’t be again.

 

The doctor gave us some pamphlets, and explained that the preferred term today is “seizure syndrome.” It’s more accurate because it’s not as precise (easier to hit a bigger target), and it’s less pejorative in that there’s no “madhouse” stigma. The disorder covers everything from gran mal, the popular perception of epilepsy with its major convulsions, to what appear to short lapses of attention. In layman’s terms, it refers to a short circuit or electrical storm in the brain. The doctor said I had experienced “partial complex” seizures, sited in the left temporal lobe. I had perceived a strong smell of leather as I sat in the Porsche because the olfactory sense is near the temporal lobe, and is part of the “aura,” or strange feeling that often precedes an epileptic seizure.

 

Epilepsy can begin at any age, and it is believed that three-quarters of the cases result from head injuries (more reason than ever to buckle up). Though seizures can start immediately, onset sometimes does not occur for years. Mine may have stemmed from a 1972 automobile accident in which I was hit in the back of the head by a flying bottle of antifreeze. Or it could have been caused by something else. We’ve all fallen off swing sets, haven’t we?

 

Mary Ann asked about driving. Remarkably, the doctor said that I could, if I were accompanied by another driver. How this would help in the case of another incident I didn’t know. Although a chaperone would restrict my mobility somewhat, I could still get behind the wheel.

 

Within a month, however, a severe allergic reaction to the anti-seizure medicine—poo-poohed by the first neurologist—sent me to another doctor. I was anxious because doctor number two might, as I knew he should—stop me from driving altogether. And he did, notifying the state as he was required to do, of my condition. He reminded me that as a driver, I too must contact the state—it’s in the driver’s manual—adding that for some with “uncontrolled “ epilepsy , auto insurance coverage becomes invalid.