In her book, The Challenge of Epilepsy, Sally Fletcher mentions numerous other medical conditions that cause the brain to mishandle information. Among these are allergies, brain injury, stroke, heart problems, problems with metabolism, sinus problems, blood sugar problems, low blood pressure, and many others. The importance of this information cannot be emphasized enough. If you go to the doctor for seizure testing and your testing is negative, one or more of several things may happen. Your doctor will say, “You don’t have seizures.” On one hand, this is a positive thing. It is one thing that you can rule out. However, it still does not help you to understand why you are having symptoms; and often doctors stop there and send you to counseling, assuming that you are stressed or coping poorly. If you have one of these conditions listed in Fletcher’s book, and especially if you have more than one, it is especially important to understand that your brain is responding to the condition physiologically and you still need and deserve treatment.
The most confusing thing I ever heard my neurologist say was, “[this negative testing result] does not mean you need to stop avoiding the trigger.” I still had a problem. It just was not a seizure. After many years of hearing, “You don’t have epilepsy. You are fine,” I did not knwo what to do with this. Accepting the diagnosis of migraine was crucial to enabling myself to begin getting well. Accepting that some of my other medical conditions also affected my head allowed me to understand why migraine treatment had limits.