Hi all,
In mid-November 2019, I suddenly blacked out at home one Sunday evening and remained unconscious until the Tuesday afternoon. I wasn't aware that I had lost consciousness though until the following weekend as I was plagued with what can only be described as a really heavy and fuzzy grogginess and a ferry-in-a-storm level of dizziness that took days to clear enough to process what had happened. Ever since, I have experienced an uncountable number of sudden blackouts of varying lengths, and I continue to struggle with dizziness, difficulty finding words, memory loss, intense delirium, inability to process things, 'mind fog', chronic fatigue, insomnia and a number of other symptoms that I currently can't remember. I was admitted into hospital in December 2019 and had a blackout whilst in the middle of talking with a doctor by my bedside. After they eventually brought me back to consciousness, a neurologist came to see me to say that he reckoned I had had a Non-Epileptic Attack Disorder (NEAD) episode and that was when I first found out a little bit about FND. I was subsequently referred to a Neuro Psychologist as an outpatient who I finally started being seen (remotely) by in January 2021 (delay due to the pandemic) for FND talking therapy and I have now had 7 sessions. During this time though, a chain of serious and rather intense life events kept happening, so each session has ended up being more of a crisis prevention rather than working through/with my FND directly. Most recently, the culmination of the chain of recent events combined with me having had to seriously and continuously overdo things due to my university telling me that regardless of my diagnosis I have to finish my degree this year or lose the whole degree, has meant that my FND symptoms have been incredibly bad lately. The problem is, I didn't know that pushing myself with my academia or the effect of present time life experiences on me would have any effect on my FND symptoms. I've read into what FND and NEAD are like as much as I've been able to since I was first told about it back in December 2019, but I'm still really struggling to understand it all and process my own FND. Ironically, I'm only recently coming to realise that it seems it's my FND symptoms that's preventing me from processing my own FND. What makes it even more frustrating though, is that I'm not new to having health conditions that I hadn't heard of before. In addition to my asthma and IBS, I also have endometriosis (for the last 9 years) and I struggled with post-concussive syndrome after a head and spine injury (nothing too serious, just a small crack and excess fluid) from November 2018 until the Spring of 2019, so I'm used to processing and understanding health conditions that are new to me and are complex in nature and then being able to work out the right balance for me to be able to move forwards with those conditions. However, I don't seem to be able to do any of that with my FND, despite my continued efforts...
Can I ask what advice people may have and what things have helped others process and understand their FND please?
Thank you in advance and my apologies for the length!
