Discussions By Condition: Medical Stories

Korsafoff Psychosis

• Posted By: Jennifer Pet
• March 10, 2007
• 00:48 AM

My daughter is 39 years old. She was admitted to hospital 7 months ago in a coma. She was in a coma for two weeks and was diagnosed with brain injury and alcohol dementia. She is also a bulimic. She was in Brain Injury Rehabiliation for 7 weeks for occupational therapy, speech therapy and was released into our care. She had major seizures (grand mal) when she was in the hospital and now is on several seziure medicines. She currently has 2-3 seizures a day (not life threatening according to the hospital). One doctor said they are psuedo seizures, others say they are not. I believe because she is a bulimic, she does bring on seizures just prior or during eating, as the majority of the seizures take place at meal times. Her attention scan is limited and cannot retain information. We have her living with us, and for the first month it was wonderful, even with all these problems. She would be happy, courteous, child-like, but we could live with it. We take her to the doctors every two weeks to have her seizure drug monitored ("Dilantan) and she has major seizures, when the level is low.
For the past three weeks, life has become impossible for us (the parents) as she now has bouts of depression and cannot focus on things. She rehashes her life over and over (losing her house (due to drinking) not be able to work cannot go anywhere alone (as she may have a seziure). We could handle our daughter when she was in the happy moods but these bouts of depression are unbearable. She accuses us of brinking on her seizures, because she sees the strain on our faces and she says this brings on seizures. She focuses on one thing and one thing only (her man friend, when she will see him (every weekend) and that is all she focuses on. Today, I believe our spirits were broken, again she said the seizures come on when she is with us and that she wants to contact someone where she can live somewhere else. She is not able to live on her own or take care of herself due to her condition. I finally said, fine, I will call someone to have you placed somewhere of your choice. She went to another room and cried and cried, and this time no one ran to reassure her of our love and that we want her here. About 1/2 hour later to reappeared, apologized and said "please do not call anyone, to place me somewhere else". I now her seizures are real and she is combating a lot, being an alcoholic, bulimia, brain injury and seizures. I have observed in the last two days, that she dwells only one thing and when the seizures start they are magnified until we spend sometimes hours reassuring her that we understand what she is going through.
I cannot get any answers from doctors, etc. Is this depression part of all her conditions? What coping methods can we use? Any suggestions or any knowledge someone has to from experiences such as this, would be greatly appreciated. We are becoming, tired, exhausted and numb.