Hello, everybody!
I'm here to find information and support to help my husband and our family.
He has several "brain" issues. He has suffered from as many as eight concussions (he doesn't quite remember) over the course of his life, beginning when he was very young. He's been diagnosed with some type of ideopathic seizure disorder and "pre-parkinson's" (which I've never heard of). There's also semi-diagnosed PTSD with indications of some level of dissociative identity disorder.

They have him taking Lamictal, which does seem to help a LOT. That's as far as I've been able to encourage him to get with any kind of therapy or treatment. I can't FORCE him to do any more, so for the most part, I am very grateful for the good days and try not to fear the bad ones.

Because there are still bad days, and when they get bad, they get really bad. Mood swings from rage to despair to rage to sobbing inconsolably. Memory lapses/blackouts. Seizure activity and panic attacks. He's never physically violent, but can get verbally abusive sometimes.

He doesn't understand that, as traumatic as these episodes are for him, they are just as traumatic for the rest of us. He had a really bad night last Friday, and on Saturday, our youngest son tried to run away because he was so freaked out. I try to keep things as normal for the kids as I can, but there's nothing normal about a grown man yelling and wailing and shaking for hours and...i love him very much, but it's very hard on us all.

He's spoken to his doctor, and they don't seem to be taking this all that seriously. He has months where he's fine, and then a scattering of a few days that are bad, and they seem to think that's actually pretty normal. We try to make sure that he gets enough sleep and eats regularly and takes care of all that basic self-care, but some days he doesn't and that's when things get rough. I have to work, and I honestly can't afford to be there all the time to help out.

And again, MOST of the time he's fine and everything's cool.

IS this normal? What more can I do to help? He's already starting to minimize how bad Friday was...And if I can't do much more to help him, what can I do to help the rest of us?