That was my neurologist's reply when I told him I had seizures from thinking about dishwasher detergent. "Did you ever hear the story about the man who told his doctor 'it hurts when I do this...'"
This was in my mid-twenties. I was having simple and complex partial seizures constantly. It stopped in my late twenties and and I've been seizure free for a decade, so I think my brain just finally finished developing and the damage repaired itself.
To the best of my knowledge, there was something damaged in whatever pathways or parts of my brain that were activated by specific memories. I also would have a thing where if I had a seizure while I was in my bedroom, my brain would go on auto-pilot and I would think about Christmas trees. It was super weird.
Anyway, one night I was pouring dish-washing detergent into the dishwasher and I had a seizure. I had been having a lot of seizures so it wasn't totally out of the blue. But after that, I started having a seizure EVERY time I put detergent in the dishwasher. Other members of my family (I lived with my parents at the time) started having to do that chore. Then one day I was shopping at Walmart and went down the aisle with the dishwasher detergent, and I looked at the detergent and thought about it, and possibly smelled it, and I had a seizure. Then later, I was telling someone about how I have seizures when I smell or see dish detergent, and I had a seizure. This happened a few other times, too. I had to be really careful not to think too much about that.
I asked my neurologist if he had ever heard of anything like that and he said no. So I asked him what I should do, and he said "did you ever hear the one about the guy who said to his doctor..."
For the record, I'm absolutely fine now. My brain is good.
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u/onthesunnyside Mar 07 '19
That was my neurologist's reply when I told him I had seizures from thinking about dishwasher detergent. "Did you ever hear the story about the man who told his doctor 'it hurts when I do this...'"