Singing the Brain Electric

Promise me you'll see a doctor, my friend implored after I told her stories of what can very well be pre-seizure symptoms that occur while driving or at the movie theater. A slack tightening of the body, a glaze-gaze at the road or screen ahead, I often feel a static numbness enveloping my brain. Much like how a foot falls asleep. Sometimes it's just a second. Sometimes it's a few seconds and I can feel my brain and body wanting to give into it. I then feel the sensation that unconsciousness looms and a deep breath or a jerk of my body brings me back to okay again, at least for a little while. It is much like waking up from a nightmare. Sometimes--especially at night during my 35-minute commute to or from work--I fight the impending unconsciousness off and on during the entire drive. That has only happened twice.

I explained to her the first episode I had at a theater just over a month ago. I went to the theater alone to see "Nope" and there was a scene with lots of flashing. Looking away and closing my eyes didn't cease the flashing and the light-headedness and static fuzzed in my head. I imagined the one other person in the theater having no idea that the woman a few rows behind her was possibly about to have a medical event. Plus, the movie was good and I wasn't going to leave.

The first time I ever experienced the static was 12 years ago when I started Wellbutrin, a depression medication that shouldn't be taken if you have a seizure threshold. I was grocery shopping with my then-boyfriend and struggled with stopping to look at the shelves. Cotton mouth occurred suddenly and if I didn't keep moving and jerking parts of my body, I felt that I would black out. I told him I had to keep moving and abandoned him as I meandered through the store, fighting something off. Standing at the check-out line was a struggle. I was close to telling the cashier that she might have to call an ambulance. Driving home, I had my boyfriend interact with me the entire time in order to prevent what I felt was something awful from happening. We got home and started to cook dinner and I spent the time searching for ingredients and spoons that I already had out. When on Wellbutrin, my jaw jerked involuntarily and for several weeks I was unable to complete a whole sentence when speaking, having lost my train of thought.

On only two occasions has the static included visual hallucinations. Both times, the hallucination was that the road ahead of me had splintered and I was about to crash into the road ahead. It didn't last long. It was like a blip in reality. Both of these events happened this year. Last year while on a solo road trip, I had just finished hiking in Dolly Sods in West Virginia. It was raining and dark and I was looking for a place to sleep in my car. The stress of that along with the disorienting patterns of light and water turned my brain to static. I had my husband stay on the phone with me until I had found a place to park. Because of all this static, my husband also stays on the phone with me during my commutes home from work.

Over the years, I have put off seeing a doctor thinking that maybe it's just anxiety. However, I am very comfortable behind the wheel, even in different states when I'm by myself. I have no fear of being in theaters alone. I prefer it, actually. Epilepsy does run on my mother's side of the family, but I think that it may have been exacerbated by alcoholism. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I gave into the static sensation but I always fight it with a jerk of my body or an inhale of air. I went to the theater again today, alone, and although there wasn't any flashing, it began again. For a solid few minutes, I squirmed in my chair, fighting off the suffocation of static as the lead actress realized that she was living in a nightmare.