Increasing my VNS!

Well I've had my VNS turned up!

We went to see my epilepsy nurse at the hospital to see what level we should put my VNS up to.  We looked at my seizure diary to see at the number of seizures that I had and then my nurse looked at the amount of seizure activity that I had in my brain.  We used the weeks that I was away and the seizure diary that I had so she could see if she could match where we had written about my seizures and where my VNS had picked up the seizure activity.  There was one point where I was out for a walk to the shops with Emma and I thought that I was going to go into an absence, and I seemed to feel my VNS "kick in", and my absence was cut short!  It was a weird feeling, and it will be something to get used to, but it was nice to have a shorter absence.  Emma managed to take the exact time that I had the seizure so I could write it in my seizure diary so that was useful!

It turned out that we managed to spot 49 signs of activity and the signs that we spotted were able to be matched up to the times on the computer!  We told my epilepsy nurse about the absence that I had that I felt was cut short by the VNS and how Emma took the exact time and she looked it up on the computer to see if the VNS managed to pick up the same time that Emma said.  To our surprise, she managed to find exactly the same time on the computer!  She also said that it said that I used my VNS magnet a lot which is strange because I hadn't used it at all, but then we realised that I might have used it when I was showing my managers at work how to use the magnet if I go into a seizure!

She used a type of wand that she told me to place over the generator in my chest that she linked up to a handheld computer so she could adjust the settings in my VNS.  She then changed the settings to a level of 0.5.  This may not seem like much, but I could definitely feel it!  Sometimes, I felt as if I was being continuously punched in the throat and I kept on coughing.  At some points, I had issues with shortness of breath as well.  This also made me panic even more which made my breathing even more difficult, so I have been having a few issues!  But over the past few days, I've been getting used to it, which means that I haven't been feeling as much pain in my throat any more.  I was telling my dance teacher about my coughing, and she said that the coughing may be difficult, but she's sure that it would be easier to cope with that absences and tonic-clonic seizures!  And I have to say, she has a point!

I'm feeling a bit better since my increase now, and I just feel the occasional lump in my throat and the need to cough, but on the bright side, I have barely been having any absences and my tonic-clonic seizures are a lot better.  This shows that the VNS is definitely having a positive effect!