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• Anger and energy
• Depression and hope
• Fatigue and accommodation
• Fear and realism
• Guilt and self-worth
People’s reactions to HIV infection differ widely, but nearly everyone shares to some extent feelings of anger, depression, fatigue, fear, and guilt. These feelings are not stages; they come in no order. Some people notice more of one feeling at certain times, more of another at other times. Some people have several or all of the feelings at once. All the feelings are part of human nature. They are all reasonable reactions to HIV infection. They are also probably more or less unavoidable. This chapter describes the feelings, their causes, and the ways people have found to deal with them.
Anger and Energy-Lisa Pratt: My husband had a lot of anger, which he first directed at me. He criticized, lashed out, once threatened to kill me. At first he refused to use a condom. He said, “Why did some jerk donate blood and now I have to use a condom?” He’d beat his fist on the table.
Alan Madison: I am not particularly angry.
Some people, like Lisa Pratt’s husband, easily admit and express anger. Others, like Alan Madison, do not acknowledge it. In any case, everyone with HIV infection has reason to be angry.
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Now that your hands are energized you can use them to clear congestion, increase relaxation, and ease discomfort.
J Rub your feet and massage under the arch for about a minute. If your feet are very tense take a little longer over this, then place them flat on the floor if sitting.
2 Sit relaxed or lie on the floor or bed; slow down your breathing.
3 Close your eyes and imagine yourself totally well and peaceful. If you cannot conjure up this image, give yourself the command.
‘I am totally well and peaceful,’ and imagine a pure white light is entering your head, filling your body and coming from your fingers and palms. Reach up beyond your head and stroke about three to four inches above your body just as though you were touching it; move down over your face, neck, chest and abdomen and then sweep the hands to either side of the body; this is important because you need to take the congestion clear of your body. You will feel prickling or heat in your hands as you pick up congestion. You can just flick this off as though you are shaking water from your hands.
4 Continue stroking for about ten minutes or until your arms feel tired.
5 Now, still imagining you are filled with white light and seeing it coming from your hands, hold them over your abdomen and imagine your digestive tract and all your internal organs becoming healthy and vitalized.
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The temporal lobes and the frontal lobes are the most important in a discussion of epilepsy because they are most “epileptogenic.” We don’t know why.
Scars, tumors, and other damage in the temporal and frontal lobes of the brain are much more likely to be accompanied by seizures than damage to the occipital lobes or parietal lobes. However, just for completeness, we will briefly discuss these areas as well.
The primary function of the occipital lobe, located in the back of the brain, is vision. Messages from the retina (the back of the eyeball) are transmitted by way of the optic (eye) nerves and by a pathway (the optic radiation) to the occipital lobe, where vision is registered by the brain. Objects off to your left side (when you look straight ahead) are “seen” by the right side of your retina and proceed along the path to the right side of your brain. Objects on your right (when you look straight ahead) go to the left side of your brain. Vision is complex, and when one stimulates the occipital cortex electrically, the patient sees only bright lights in a random pattern. When a seizure begins in the occipital lobe—which is not common—flashing bright lights may be experienced off to the left side, if it occurs in the right cortex, or to the left side if the right cortex is involved.
The parietal lobe is where “it” all comes together, where much of what we sense by vision or touch achieves meaning. Here, those flashing lights become patterns constituting a formed visual image; through interconnections with the frontal lobe (where memories are stored), we are able to store the images as memories or to recall the formed image as recognized faces or scenes. The posterior temporal-parietal lobe is the site where sounds heard become the pattern of words, which are recognized and remembered or given meaning by association with prior experiences stored in the frontal lobes. It is where speech that is heard becomes speech that is understood and where the sense of touch and feel of a particular object is identified as a key, a ball, or a block. Thus, the parietal lobe is called “the association cortex.” It is rarely the source of seizures and seems to play little role in our understanding of the types of epilepsy. It is not, in other words, very “epileptogenic.”
This basic and simplified lesson in anatomy should provide a better understanding of the many variations of partial seizures discussed below.
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