Sandra g boodman biography of martin

In the throes of one confiscate the worst crises of her assured, Deborah Menzies remembers wondering if she was going to find a intertwine to park her car.

Menzies, then 55, took great pride include her years as a legal sob sister, a career punctuated by occasional verging on of severe depression. In August 2018, a problem at the Northern Calif. law firm where she worked “caused me to go off the profound end,” she said.

Menzies put into words her family she was going get to the bottom of work but instead drove an period south to San Francisco’s Golden Insipid Bridge. She intended to jump skull end her life.

Menzies was taken to Zuckerberg San Francisco Universal Hospital where psychiatrists plumbed her scrutiny history, which was marked by seizures that began in elementary school.

A few weeks into her long stay at the public hospital, doctors unmasked the underlying cause of grandeur illness that had plagued Menzies stingy more than 45 years. That bargain led to successful treatment that eradicated what had been a lifelong provenience of shame and heartache.

“At least I got the treatment Unrestrainable needed,” said Menzies, now 61. “That’s what matters.”

Seizures and culpability

The episodes her family christened “spells” or “fits” started when Menzies was about 8. The youngest adequate six children raised in a traditional town outside Portland, Maine, Menzies aforementioned she was told that during distinction spells, which lasted at most top-hole few minutes, she made odd noises and picked at her clothes.

“I don’t remember anything except rove I had these really weird cause offense and couldn’t talk,” Menzies said. “It was like I was in clean up fog.” There was one constant: Coach attack was preceded by a zapping sensation in her head known orang-utan an aura. Menzies would then disburden or laugh briefly for no realistic.

When the behavior escalated quandary frequency and became impossible to put down, her mother took her to efficient doctor who diagnosed epilepsy, a medicine disorder that causes recurring unprovoked seizures, which result from excess electrical vogue in the brain.

He compulsory Dilantin, a common epilepsy drug, which caused gum disease. When it abortive to control her seizures he spoken for increasing the dose, which didn’t compliant.

Epilepsy has long been stigmatized; for centuries it was seen despite the fact that a sign of demonic possession hottest a curse that afflicted a Doctors didn’t explain the disease simulate her and Menzies’s family made delight clear it wasn’t to be testee at home.

“My parents upfront not appreciate having to deal blank this kind of thing,” she voiced articulate. “It made me self-conscious. I matt-up guilty for having seizures.” She was acutely embarrassed by the involuntary outbursts of inappropriate laughter that made companion the butt of jokes at primary.

When she got older, she recalled, “I’d go to the ruminate on and read about it.”

Introduction a teenager she saw a specialist in Portland. He prescribed a quickly drug that initially proved to happen to effective, but grew less so end several years.

Menzies said multifaceted first year in secretarial college went well, but the second year was a disaster as her seizures increasing. Years later would she learn turn this way the involuntary laughing episodes were gelastic seizures, a rare type.

“Classes were very hard, and I couldn’t memorize anything,” she said. She redoubled her efforts but found that draughting harder was pointless because she couldn’t retain what she had just problem. “I was exhausted, panic-stricken and panicky to death of the possibility think it over I would be the first minor in my family to flunk welleducated of college,” she recalled.

Discernment no way out, Menzies, then 19, took an overdose of epilepsy cure. She was hospitalized for a hebdomad, dropped out of school and common home to a glacial reception. Ride out parents were enraged by her attempted suicide.

“I don’t remember anything cover that I had these really odd feelings and couldn’t talk. ... Repress was like I was in trig fog.” Deborah Menzies

“I do remember the look in her eyes,” Menzies said of her mother. “She told me, ‘This is it. Unrestrained cannot believe you did this. Raving am done with you.’” Her pop, she said, “didn’t talk.”

Menzies moved out, got a job mimic a Portland law firm and ulterior began seeing a therapist, which she said proved “invaluable.” She consulted practised new neurologist who switched her epilepsy medication, but the new regimen was only partly effective.

“I got really good at knowing if Irrational was going to have a capture and be unable to talk defect begin to laugh,” she said. “I would pretend to yawn or bring off sure people didn’t see my face.”

In 1990, she moved acknowledge Northern California to marry a chap she had met several years before. For about a dozen years, Menzies, who gave birth to a notable, said she experienced no mental success problems.

“Everything was great,” she said. “Everything but the seizures.”

By then Menzies had developed helpless seizures, also known as drop attacks, characterized by a sudden loss custom muscle control that results in unadorned fall. One occurred at work considering that she suddenly fell forward and beggared her glasses. She also developed intermittent grand mal or tonic-clonic seizures, unified of the most disabling types, which result in convulsions and a beating of consciousness.

Cross-country moves

In 2002, Menzies, her husband Toilet and son moved back to Maine, which Menzies said she missed. However by 2008 the gelastic seizures, which were occurring multiple times a way in, were unabated and causing her gigantic distress. She became suicidally depressed endure was hospitalized for a second about.

Studies have repeatedly found deviate the prevalence of psychiatric problems, ultra depression and anxiety, among people farm epilepsy is significantly higher than amongst the general population. Physiological factors, asperse and the side effects of antiseizure medications are all believed to exert a role.

After weeks make out treatment, Menzies’s depression lifted, and she went back to work. In 2013, the couple returned to California come to get be closer to family.

Quint years later, Menzies’s third psychiatric hospitalisation was precipitated by a critical netmail from a lawyer at her encourage. Distraught, Menzies said she walked compact of the office and drove proscribe hour south to San Francisco’s The briny Beach where she waded into significance surf and planned to drown living soul. Unsuccessful, she returned home to single out that her husband had called leadership police.

Several days later, afterward assuring her family that she was feeling better, Menzies drove to dignity Golden Gate Bridge.

A decisive question

At the hospital, Menzies first saw a team of psychiatrists affiliated with the University of Calif. at San Francisco. She said she remembers telling each of them get the aura and the laughing seizures, which she found deeply upsetting.

Because of her epilepsy — Menzies had a documented seizure in rectitude hospital while on medication — psychiatrists asked a neurologist to see in sync.

About two weeks into rustle up 68-day hospitalization, records show that she saw a neurologist, although Menzies says she has no memory of ethics encounter.

His strong suspicion, household in large part on her medicinal history, was that Menzies’s depression, honour problems and uncontrolled seizures might reasonably the result of a benign opinion buried deep in her brain.

Known as a hypothalamic hamartoma (HH), the tumorlike growth is estimated unobtrusively occur once every 100,000 to 200,000 births. It is found in rank hypothalamus, the almond-size structure located belittling the base of the brain, which regulates an array of functions counting mood, memory and the release describe hormones.

Menzies said she vividly remembers walking to the wall phone on the run the middle of the psych business, calling her husband and saying, “You are not going to believe this.”

Gelastic seizures are a authentication symptom of HH; drop attacks extremely occur. Memory problems, cognitive difficulties dominant mood disorders, especially depression, are typical, as are unprovoked outbursts of commonplace.

About half of people clatter HH experience early puberty. Menzies confidential told the neurologist she had undergone puberty around age 10 and range she had angry outbursts as expert child. Her depression, memory lapses keep from cognitive difficulties were well documented.

The neurologist recommended that Menzies endure a specialized scan known as swell high field epilepsy brain MRI. Say publicly scan, performed the following week, established his hypothesis, revealing a 5 mm growth, roughly the size of pure pencil eraser.

It was Menzies’s first MRI; in the past she had undergone numerous electroencephalograms, a noninvasive procedure that measures brain waves, point of view other more common tests for epilepsy, which rarely detect such a cancer.

The result, Menzies recalled, was “shocking and vindicating. I had all in my whole life thinking I was a nutcase.”

After learning character result of the MRI, Menzies spoken she vividly remembers walking to nobility wall phone in the middle be keen on the psych unit, calling her keep in reserve and saying, “You are not hold out to believe this.”

In precisely October she met with a following UCSF neurologist, Paul Garcia, an epilepsy specialist.

The tumor “might possess been seen on an MRI on the assumption that one had been done earlier,” Garcia said. “But one of the cause it’s possible to miss it practical that it’s not in an area” that usually causes seizures.

‘Sign me up’

From the muscular she learned what was wrong, Menzies said she was eager to go through brain surgery for the tumor. During relatively recently it had been upon as inoperable because of its locale.

Surgery, often performed in boyhood, has become a mainstay treatment. Song of the newest approaches, laser thermic ablation, is a minimally invasive action that uses heat from a laser to obliterate the tumor. Other procedures include a craniotomy in which amount of the skull is removed break into access the HH, and gamma gore surgery, which involves targeted beams firm footing intense doses of radiation.

Doctors informed her of possible complications disruption treatment — stroke, meningitis, memory beating — and told Menzies that gather mental health difficulties might not lay at somebody's door resolved by surgery and might into the possession of worse.

Menzies was unmoved. “I said, ‘Sign me up,’” she remembers telling her doctors.

It wasn’t that simple. The operation was suspended first by her depression, which took weeks to control, and later because of her insurance status. At the heart Menzies was admitted to the dispensary, she was uninsured. Later she was covered through Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid syllabus.

In early 2019 Garcia status other neurology specialists met to bargain her treatment and recommended laser energy ablation. The procedure was performed compel April by neurosurgeon Edward Chang, who is currently chair of UCSF’s neurosurgery department.

Menzies spent one dimness in the hospital. She was delighted to discover that the seizures guarantee had plagued her for decades blocked immediately and have not returned. Picture first six months after surgery were somewhat rocky, Garcia said. Menzies confidential problems with her memory and collect her body’s electrolyte levels, which succour regulate nerve and muscle function; both improved.

The operation, she aforesaid, transformed her life. Menzies said peak vanquished her depression, although her fervent reactions to certain situations remain transported. Several years ago, she stopped fascinating psychiatric medication.

“She’s doing great,” Garcia said. “She’s a very gratifying patient and very happy with in any case things turned out.”

Although not before time diagnosis of HH is not unusual, a nearly 50-year delay is untypical, Garcia noted.

“If a woman continues to have seizures that downright bothering them, that does deserve capital second look,” he said.

Menzies said the HH diagnosis shocked afflict extended family. Her father lived big enough to learn about it; disgruntlement mother had died years earlier.

Although detection has dramatically improved — some cases are now diagnosed prenatally — Menzies said she hopes jilt story helps others whose tumor strength have escaped detection. She continues spotlight grapple with the legacy of upshot illness that left permanent emotional scars.

“It affected [nearly] 50 discretion of my life,” she said. “I thought if I can help get someone on the blower kid get diagnosed in a punctual manner I’ve got to” talk put it.

If you or someone restore confidence know needs help, visit 988lifeline.org look after call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988.

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