damefriday-blog

[damefriday-blog]

Why Mikel Coffee is amongst my top reasons for moving to London

For those of you who don’t know what Mikel coffee is, and you’re lucky enough to be living in London, congratulations! You are about to learn where the best coffee in town is located. Think of Mikel coffee as the Greek equivalent of Costa if Costa didn’t suck. The first Mikel coffee shop opened in a small town in central Greece. Not long after, multiple shops sprung all over the country, spreading the love of Freddo Cappuccino all over Greece, the Balkans, and finally now, London. Every summer I return to Greece and go on a steady diet of two (or three) of these delicious concoctions per day. I don’t know what the hell they put in it, but it makes all other coffee makers look like amateurs. Plus, they always serve you some cake slices or cookies on the side for free because we’re Greek and therefore generous to a dangerous point.

I only started drinking coffee the summer before I came to England. I desperately wanted to lose weight and I was trying every trick that the internet told me would surely suppress my appetite; that included coffee and cigarettes. And so I let my sister introduce me to Mikel coffee. At the time I had no idea the place was part of a chain; I just thought she���d discovered an obscure, tiny but brilliant coffee house. I followed her lead and asked for a cold Freddo cappuccino. The tall drink was like an oasis set amid a blazing hot Greek August. I was convinced I could never have any other coffee, since it would just suffer the comparison. Still, I came to England, swallowed my snobbery and started drinking those posh lattes coffee shops charge four quid for, because they have fancy names and a few drops of flavoured syrup. But I never forgot my first love.

But this isn’t so much about me drinking coffee as it is about what the coffee represents, especially for expats such as myself. When I was a teenager, the first and most important question asked after school was ‘anyone up for a coffee?’. Even though none of us were in fact drinking coffee-whether out of choice or because parents forbade it- the question still stood because it had nothing to do with the beverage; it had everything to do with the things discussed around the table. Secrets, gossip, painful confessions (‘I kissed that guy you like’ or ‘My dad thinks I’m in class right now’ or ‘I got a C and my parents don’t know about it’ or ‘ I think I have a crash on our Physics teacher but I’m shit at Physics so what am I going to do?’).

  During winter afternoons, I made Greek coffee for my dad. I used the traditional Greek pot (briki), one teaspoon of coffee, one teaspoon of sugar, all boiled in a briki that’s three-quarters up filled with water. The ingredients were adjusted (depending on how sleepy or hangover my dad was), but the technique remained the same. Stir until the components are dissolved in the boiling water and leave it till it bubbles up. You need to be careful and pick it up at the right moment, just when the bubbles move upwards. Take care when you pour it in the tiny cup to make sure you get a fine, beige layer (kaimaki) on top. That shows you are truly skilled in the art of coffee making. And if you manage to form a bubble on that top layer (also called the eye), then the person who drinks it will be lucky. I always got the top layer right and was so excited when I managed to form the elusive bubble. It was one of the first moments when I felt a sense of responsibility, followed by pride when I got it right.

In 2002, a Greek archaeologist wrote and published a book that chronicled her grandmother’s life in Smyrna. According to the author, she was a powerful witch and one of the most influential people in Smyrna prior to the Great Fire. Apparently, the writer found a chest full of spells and all sorts of creepy stuff at her house and that served as the inspiration for the book. When my grandmother heard about the book she was ecstatic. Our family is descended from the Greek colonies of Asia Minor, a place recognised as a fertile, culture hub at the time. My great grandparents had to flee Smyrna at the end of the Greco-Turkish war, boarding on a boat and handing over all their gold to the boatman in exchange for safe passage. So there goes my inheritance and all I have left is one Turkish pound my mum made into a necklace. The point is, my grandmother saw this book as the story she never had the time and willpower to write. She kept talking about it, read all she could find on the author and when the book finally came out, she bought copies for the both of us. But after a couple of days she dropped the book, threw away all the magazines with the author’s interviews and told me not to read it. Naturally, her advice had the exact opposite effect. It took a weekend and a fake-sick-stay-at-home day for me to finish the 560-page novel and, by the end of it, I knew why.

  The book is set in Smyrna but pays little attention to its setting and its rich history, apart from when it brings up racist stereotypes. It might as well have been set on Mars and it wouldn’t make any damn difference. My grown-up self is quite confused by it; I think it’s supposed to be a success story, the tale of a woman who was born in the poorest area in Smyrna and how she managed to become powerful through magic, as opposed to all the other poor suckers who remained poor because they didn’t have magic. I’m not sure whether the author’s intention was to create a strong female anti-heroine in her protagonist, someone who stands up for herself at a time when women had no voice, because what she spat on the page was a female character who, literally and metaphorically, fucks everyone to get what she wants, poisons her enemies and love-potions powerful, rich men. She’s annoying, petty and a royal fucking bitch. Even my twelve-year-old, sex-obsessed self realised that something was wrong with representation in that blowjob-filled book. Characters such as the Turkish mystical witch lady that assumes the role of the mentor, the protagonist’s four disposable husbands who she either dumps or bumps off, the stereotypical Greek mother and her sister, both of whom serve as comic relief. But what really stuck with me were two elements: the reading of the coffee and the cards.

 I became obsessed with the idea that coffee dregs could tell me whether the boy I liked would ask me out, or whether I’d become a famous film director and win an Oscar for the insanely successful and brilliant film I intended to write and direct. Would I be pretty and skinny? Would I live in England or France? I even drank my first coffee-despite wanting to barf-and asked my grandmother to read my future. She took my cup, all serious-looking and professional. She looked for some time, turned it twice and then smiled and patted me on the head. She told me I would go to uni, travel a lot, make lots of friends, be popular and much loved. Success wouldn’t be easy, I would have to work hard but, in the end, I would accomplish what I set out to do. She told me what she thought I needed to hear. Apparently, that was common practice back then; if the reader judged the cup’s content as grim, sad or scary, she would make something up or stay in vague territory. Up to this day, I still don’t know what my grandmother saw in my future and whether she was telling me the truth. She passed away while I was in England studying for my Masters.

  The first time I brought my very English boyfriend home my mum made him a Greek coffee. It gave him an awful stomach ache, but this had more to do with how strong the coffee was and less with my mum’s coffee making abilities. After he managed to drink the entire thing (he’s a brave one), my mum turned the cup upside down and offered to read his future. The proper way to do this (according to my grandmother) is to hold the cup face out on its side, turn it three times, then turn it over and leave it there for a bit. My mum just turned it over and smiled at my clearly uncomfortable boyfriend who happens to have a general anxiety regarding the future and he clearly thought my mum was dead serious about reading his future. I was enjoying myself too much, so I didn’t say anything and decided to sit back and watch. The centre of the cup supposedly represents the past, middle part is the present and top part, the future. Big shapes are important events, broken lines mean disruptions in plans while straight ones mean success. That’s all I remember and it’s a lot more than my mum knows. When she picked up the cup with a wise-woman air of superiority, inhaled deeply and looked at the coffee dregs all I could think was professor Trelawney from Harry Potter and how much her hair resembled my mum’s. After turning the cup a few times, she told my boyfriend that his book would get published and he’d be rich and famous. She also said we’d have a lovely holiday. So, when it comes to fortune-telling, my mum is not that different from my gran.

  Living abroad is tough and not for everyone. My sister didn’t stay here even though my parents wanted her to. I’m proud of her because she stuck to her guns and succeeded in what she wanted. She’s now back in Greece where she has friends, her boyfriend, people whose temperament she recognises and accepts and all the Greek coffee she can drink. I am here, having achieved my teenage self’s dream to live and work abroad but I don’t have a lot of things I didn’t recognise while I was living in my home country. Greek coffee means home, family and friends. Seeing your loved ones, talking to them in person and not over Skype, hug them and cry when you’re upset instead of holding back because you don’t want them to worry when all those miles separate you and there’s nothing they can do. It hasn’t been an easy ride and every job rejection feels personal, just like Brexit felt personal. I was rejected on a national and now on an individual level. I feel like I’m standing alone and the fact that I’ve been living in a distinctively white city hasn’t helped. Sometimes, I just want my mum, but I suppose a good cup of Greek coffee is always a welcome consolation.

[damefriday-blog]

Why having anorexia is a full-time job

Looking at old photos of myself, I’ve got mixed feelings about the fact that I look better now, in my late twenties, than I used to in my early twenties. I try to avoid doing it but at the same time I can’t help it. It’s always hard because I look so ill and, at the same time, so happy.

When I had anorexia, I was on top of the world, fiercely proud of myself and my super-human ability to control how much and what I ate, unlike all the common people who were slaves to carbs. Looking at my younger self now, I can recognize how big my head looked compared to the rest of my body and how my admittedly very Greek nose was starting to resemble Mount Olympus in the plain of Thessaly. I can see how my hair was thinning on the front of my skull and how I kept cutting it shorter and shorter as things got worse over time, as if I was mourning the pounds of flesh that died every month inside me. I got occasional moments of clarity when I could recognise that something was wrong. I washed my hair and cried over the broken strands clogging up the drain protector. I was always cold, no matter the season, sleeping wrapped in a duvet till June-time. Bruises started appearing all over my body and wouldn’t go away. My bowel system was completely screwed up, alternating between weeks of constipation and diarrhoea. I was happier with the latter, since my stomach always looked its flattest then. The worst thing of all was the effect it had on my epilepsy: I went from having one seizure every six months to having them on a monthly basis. And still, I told myself all that was a small price to pay for perfection.

It all started at uni in the dumbest way possible, with the conscious decision to abandon my short-lived attempt to build some cooking skill and instead start buying a loaf of bread to eat a day and a pack of strawberry flavoured jello as desert; half a loaf around noon time with a large bowl of jello and the same ‘meal’ repeated in the evening. In a month’s time my clothes felt looser. I looked in the mirror and I liked what I saw. I moved to half a loaf a day and three bowls of jello. In the space of four months I went from a healthy 160 pounds to 108 pounds (I’m 5 feet and 7 inches tall). Suddenly, clothing sizes I couldn’t even dream of became accessible. I exercised obsessively; forty minutes on the treadmill, ten minutes on the rowing machine, forty minutes on the treadmill. Every angle of my body that was up until that point hidden under muscle tissue or fat, was exposed: shoulder blades, ribcage, collar bone, hip bones, wrist bones.

In my head, I wasn’t a woman, someone tangible; I was an ideal, someone to aspire to. From a biological standpoint that wasn’t that much of a stretch from the truth: for three years, I didn’t have my period and I looked more like a walking stick rather than a person. I was completely disinterested in sex and remained a virgin till I was 21. I regressed into an infantile state and quietly withdrew myself from the world. I had to eat specific things at specific times and I needed to be at home to do that. I bought specific brands of food, counted calories and made sure I consumed less than 1000 a day (but almost always it was a lot less than that). I weighed myself every morning, naked, and stood in front of the mirror for ages, admiring my achievement, pinching bits of my body that I felt I needed to work on. The day became just a race from one meal to the next and I found that sleeping when I wasn’t eating got me from one destination to the next faster, deleting the distance from the toastie to the yogurt. I lived through TV shows. I was Blair Waldorf, and, being a writer, invented a doomed love story of my own, with my very own Chuck Bass, someone I loved more than life but I could never be with because reasons. He would hurt me repeatedly and I would always go back for more because all great loves are difficult and cruel. Right?

It took my parents a few months to figure out that, no, I wasn’t on a super successful diet, I had a real life eating disorder. They’d never encountered a situation like this outside a movie screen. They tried to help and took me to see a nutritionist who prepared a diet that was meant to aid me gain weight in a healthy manner. There isn’t a lot of awareness on eating disorders in Greece; in fact, we are a bit behind when it comes to mental health awareness in general. I didn’t even know what I was doing had a name up until that point. I just called it strength of character. I knew my parents would weigh me every time I came home and that there would be consequences if I hadn’t made any progress; I knew I had to accept that they were right, that what I was doing wasn’t healthy and that if I persisted and my period didn’t return soon, my kidneys would atrophy and I would eventually lose them. But fuck that. I didn’t want to live for that long anyway. And I would rather live another twenty years being beautiful and thin, than another sixty being average and forgettable.  

 At the time, I was volunteering with the Athens X-clusive designers’ week while also working part-time as a life model for the university of Fine Arts. No way was I going to let anyone ruin my image or take away the feeling that, in some respect, I was superior to everyone in the room. I had achieved what other people strove so hard to accomplish. I was proud to be recognised as an anorexic; I had won the title and I wore it like a badge of honour, talked about it openly with people. It was so simple for me but you will never get where I am because you’re weak.

I had to get creative. I stopped writing stories and started writing my life, inventing elaborate lies about what I was doing after I returned to my studies in Athens. I had to report to my parents what I was eating every week, whether I was following my nutritionist’s instructions and taking my weight gain supplements. My mum wanted to know if my period was back. I know this will sound weird but, in Greece, we don’t flash the toilet paper, we bin it along with all sanitary products. Therefore, my parents would have been able to tell whether I was lying about my period returning. I found out that you can induce a period-type bleed by taking contraceptives, so that solved my problem there. I talked about going -outs and trips that I’d been invited to and had supposedly been, when in fact I was staying at home, watching Gossip Girl and eating pot noodles with chopsticks so that it takes me longer to go through them. My sister idolised me; she said I looked like a real-life model. It didn’t take long to realise that my parents couldn’t do anything about me and my problem. They could huff and puff when I visited them for the holidays but they had no control over me the rest of the year. After some point, this became the normal state of the family: I was the unhealthily skinny daughter and I was accepted as that. They all went quiet and came into this silent agreement that this was our life now and that I’d always be like that. And I was happy. Nothing could possibly be wrong. Right?

 I spent four years of my life counting calories, with my weekly highlight being a chocolate crepe that I ate by cutting it in tiny pieces and wiping all the chocolate off it. Funnily enough, the turning point for me was a summer trip to France when I went from wanting nothing to wanting everything. I wish I could blame it on the boulangeries but that wasn’t it. I will post another entry to talk about my experience with a Binge Eating disorder soon. And though what followed my anorexia phase was the most shameful period of my life, I am still alive because I stopped counting and started eating again. And I sure as hell know how to eat a damn crepe now.

[damefriday-blog]

The Vasanizomai Holidays:  England

From April 2018 to March 2019 – limited time offer only, pending UK exiting the EU

  - Follow former finance minister Yannis Varoufakis on a tour across London. Depending on his schedule, whether he’s writing another book or forming another party, Yannis should be able to act as your guide and interpreter, should you require.

 - Witness the benefits of UK modest living. For the price of just £800, millennials can secure a luxury shed in London. Watch them try to justify spending their entire salary on a room that has the dimensions of a shoebox.

 - Gain unique insight into the British food culture. Visit cafes and talk to ordinary people about their choice of breakfast. What led them to this unfortunate position? Who hurt them?

 - Experience a traditional British day by the sea side. Socks and sandals available upon request for a nominal fee. Who knew the ocean could be so brown?

 - Drink some of the last bottles of imported wine. Will the UK survive without foreign, quality booze? Fuck no!

 - Visit one of the top twenty British universities of your choosing. Discuss the benefits of higher education in the UK with students. Is being in debt for the better part of their adult life worth it?

- After being horribly poisoned by what passes for British cuisine, spend a day as a patient at the Royal London Hospital. Experience one of the best healthcare systems in the world before all the highly qualified foreign medical staff migrate to another country and the whole thing collapses in on itself.

 * For just 50p a day you too can help a Brit get a proper meal and some decent coffee. Please, click button below. Thank you.

[damefriday-blog]

Free universities: The Greek experience

People ask me why I came to England. My coming here always seems to puzzle them, especially after I declare I’m from Greece. There are multiple answers I can use, depending on who I’m talking to or my mood: I came here to study; I came here because Greece has pretty much sunk to the bottom of the Mediterranean from shame and debt; I came here because I’ve wanted to live in this country since I first started learning English. But the truth of the matter is that I came here because my parents paid for it.

In the beginning of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies the audience learns that it is considered fashionable for noble families to send their progeny to China or Japan to learn the art of war. And so, in a similar fashion, Greek families of means send their children abroad for an MA, MSc, PhD and then boast about it, trying to explain to their friends what their child is doing, even though they have no clue what they’re spending a considerable amount of money on. But this is the elite we’re talking about. What about the majority? In this post, I would like to discuss how free, higher education in Greece has shaped society and how its members treat each other.

So, going to uni in Greece is free; and it’s probably because of that fact that it’s also a given. Once you finish high school and survive the Panhellenic examination, the grades you receive will secure you a place. Only then can you submit your list of prospective unis to your school. In Greece, you apply for subjects rather than universities. The subject is more important than where you study it. Most people don’t get their first choice but everyone goes somewhere. It might be the dumbest subject in a uni that’s based in buttfuck nowhere* and they will still go because they need a degree in something. Apparently, it’s better to have a degree in chicken breeding than no degree at all.

If you don’t go to university, you are considered the lowest of the low, uneducated, qualified only for manual labour. People assume you were too dumb and lazy for even the shittiest university. The irony of the matter is that finishing uni, no matter which school it is, law or interior decorating, odds are you will end up unemployed. As a country, we export oil, fruit, wine and scientists. My sister is a clinical nutritionist, currently focused on her MSc at Glasgow university, dreading the thought of going back to our parents without having secured a job. I helped a friend who studied medicine find a position here by translating the CV she submitted. She now works in London as a plastic surgeon. My best friend from school is in New York, working as an engineer, while another one is in Denmark studying and working to support herself through it.

Finding out that people in the UK have the option to not go to uni, without the stigma attached, was quite a shock for me. A few months ago, I took part in a research conducted by the HR department at work. They wanted to talk to young professionals, people under thirty, and discuss what works well for them, what’s challenging and how they, as an institution, could improve. I went, less because I had something to contribute and more because I was interested to see who was going to turn up and what they were going to say. No person in the room, except for me, had been to uni. Most of them had gotten their job through apprenticeships. They seemed very professional, goal focused people who knew what they wanted: a career in local government, a house and lots of work friends. One girl said she’s so glad she didn’t go to uni, which I thought was really sad. She was in her early twenties, talking about how much money skipping higher education has saved her and how in a couple of years she’d be able to buy a house. The others smiled and shook their heads as she went on counting the many benefits of working for local government. After I left, I still couldn’t decide whether I felt sad for her, because uni is great and people shouldn’t have to turn it down because they can’t afford it, or it was the Greek, prejudiced, mean snob inside me pitying the uneducated person. I want to believe that I’m better than this.

For the sake of avoiding any confusion I just need to clarify: I am not comparing Greek universities to British ones. Greece has neither the funds nor the infrastructure to compete with Britain, where higher education is a major source of revenue for the country. No one would pay to attend a Greek university. There are perks to entering uni in my home country though: you receive all your books for free (I got both volumes of the Norton anthology English literature, plus the Norton theory and Criticism on my first semester – all three are offered on Amazon for the price of £109.33) and you can apply for university accommodation which is also provided free of charge. The rooms are tiny but you can hardly be picky when your parents can’t properly support you. And as I’ve already stressed, you need to finish your degree in order not to be treated like the black sheep of the family.

I don’t like the fact that in my country, people can shame other people over their degree, or the lack of one. Most parents want their child to become a lawyer or a doctor or a computer engineer; a career that swallows your life to the point where you define yourself by your job. My best friend’s dad asked me once why i didn’t apply for law school, given that my grades were so high. He said medical school and law school are the only options distinguished students should consider. He was genuinely surprised when I told him that it never even crossed my mind to apply. No one ever pressured me to either and I am thankful for that. At the age of sixteen/ seventeen, when you are supposed to make this sort of choice, you can be uniquely vulnerable and susceptible to your parents’ suggestions. Lots of people I know went after the course their parents wished them to pursue. I wanted to go to Film school, become a writer and film director. I used to fantasize about who I would thank at the Oscars when I won the Best foreign film and Best original screenplay award. My parents said no. I fought back. We met in the middle: I went to study English literature and was shipped off to England for my MA Creative Writing. They paid and I’m grateful.

Education should be free and available to everyone; that is a fact and I fully support it and believe in it. The UK might have some of the greatest universities in the world but what is the point if people can’t access them because of the price tag? Choosing between being in debt for the better part of your life and starting a life without this massive burden on your shoulder is a tough choice to make when you’re seventeen years old; no one should have to do that. Going to uni is not for everyone but the choice whether to go or not shouldn’t be influenced by the cost. You don’t have to go to uni to be intelligent or well-read or politically conscious. Plenty of people come out of uni with prestigious degrees and an empty head.

Having said all that, I can’t help but wonder: should universities in the UK were free, would a similar situation to the one in Greece arise? Because right now, I think there’s plenty of snobbery to go around in Britain as it is.

*there is this amazing Greek expression, equivalent to buttfuck nowhere, that I felt I needed to share with you: kolopetinitsa. The literal translation is: village in the rooster’s ass. Isn’t the Greek language a gift to humanity?

[damefriday-blog]

Contraception and epilepsy: oh dear - Mirena Coil

When my GP first suggested I consider inserting an IUD I rejected the option almost immediately. Having stopped taking the Pill for a few weeks and with my epilepsy medication back to its normal dosage I had already started researching alternative contraception methods on my own. At this point, I could tell my choices were pretty slim and I didn’t like any of them. I didn’t want to use condoms. They are expensive and do not provide one hundred percent cover. I was in a monogamous relationship for the first time in forever but though i loved my boyfriend more than life i did not plan on having his babies. And to top all that, as I let the Pill go, painful periods returned to haunt my vagina. And yet, my answer was no. Why?

As we have already established, the internet is a scary place. In order for you to understand my immediate rejection of the suggestion that came from a qualified medical professional, I invite you to type Mirena IUD on Google and check out the questions that pop up after you hit the search button. These are the questions most frequently asked by people on the net when it comes to the coil. There are so many and any of them can trigger something in you that will make you think ‘absolutely not’. This might sound trivial and stupid to you, but for me it was the weight gain that did it. I have been dealing with eating disorders since I was very young and at the time I was furiously trying to pull myself together and I was actually succeeding! This kind of thing never goes away really but you can push it at the back of your mind and contain it. It will still manifest from time to time but you can learn to live with it. Back to the point, the idea that the coil will put the slightest amount of fat or water in my body and make the number on the weight scale go up scared the shit out of me. Hence why I was so negative from the start, despite the fact that my GP assured me this wouldn’t happen. She was lying. The almighty internet told me there was a 5 percent chance that I gain weight and that was good enough for me!

A week after this discussion took place, i got my period. It was a special one. I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t go back to sleep from the pain. I spent hours in and out of the bathroom because I was terrified that if i left the house my pad wouldn’t be enough to contain the amount of blood and tissue i was shedding. After this period was done i went back to my GP and schedule to have the Mirena coil inserted and prayed that I didn’t belong to that dreaded five percent.

Lots of people ask me whether inserting the coil was painful. Of course it was painful! You’re putting a tube up your vagina, past your cervix and into the uterus! Think of it as a really bad cervical smear. Last time I checked no one likes those. You will not enjoy it and it will hurt. At this point I feel like I need to say this though: I don’t remember the GP that inserted that stupid thing inside me but I remember my nurse. She was the loveliest lady and thanks to her my experience sucked a little bit less. She kept stroking my face during the procedure and whispering encouraging words while I was whimpering and trying to relax since when you don’t, your cervix tightens and that makes it feel worse. I owe her a huge thanks. She really made a difference. After the insertion, I was told to go back for a check up a few weeks later. There is a chance the womb will reject the coil and it will fall out of your vagina, which I thought would be really fucking disappointing because it was such hard work getting it up there in the first place. My GP explained to me that I could check the strings of my coil with my fingers to see if it’s still in place and that my partner might feel them during sex. Neither of us should be able to feel the coil itself and if we did that meant the coil was out of place and I should go back and see them. I thanked them and limped home.

The first couple of weeks I was bleeding on and of and my period smelled weird. There was some pain but nothing too serious. I checked the strings pretty much every day. I grew obsessed with the idea that it might fall off, to the point when I tried to study and write lying down, not sitting on my desk. I had one seizure in the first month after the insertion. To my eyes, that was progress. My boyfriend visited me during the weekends (we were living in different cities at the time) and I was vigilant about how careful we had to be when we had sex. He said he could feel the strings some times. It was weird. Then one day i checked and I couldn’t touch them anymore. I panicked. All sorts of stupid thoughts sprouted in my mind: maybe it slipped out of me while I was peeing and i didn’t notice or perhaps my boyfriend bumped it with his penis inside me and now it’s off on a journey or it’s stuck in my cervical canal because I accidentally pulled it while I was checking the strings. Because that makes sense. I went to my GP for an exam. She took a look and told me that the strings were cut too short and, as a result, they crawled upwards. Nothing to worry about. It will be fine. 

And so it was. I didn’t gain any weight. I still have a period, it’s a bit erratic, I get long spells of spotting or heavy bleeding, depending on the coil’s and my vagina’s mood, but I feel safe. My boobs hurt a bit around that time but it’s nothing i can’t handle. I didn’t get any cysts in my ovaries, I didn’t develop acne, I didn’t lose any hair or my interest in sex.  I’m not looking forward to removing the coil in three years’ time because the fucking strings have disappeared and it’s going to be a bitch trying to catch it and drag it out. Any seizures I have seem to be synced with my period but that’s normal; hormonal imbalances can be a seizure trigger. My seizure pattern varies; I could spend three months without a single seizure, then have two of them within the space of a week. My record is five months seizure free. No one is paying me to say all these things and this isn’t an attempt to get you to  join the club and adopt a coil. This is my experience and all the things I posted happened to me. If you want to try it, something completely different might happen to you. Your call. 

[damefriday-blog]

Contraception and epilepsy: oh dear - The Pill

The first thing I need to make crystal clear for those of you who are new to this is that contraception works different for everyone. And when you throw a bunch of anti-convulsants into the mix things tend to become more complicated. What I’m trying to say is that reading posts where people recount how the Pill, the Coil or the Implant ruined their lives is only going to upset you. I know nobody wants to hear this but unfortunately contraceptive methods have to be tested on you in order to determine how your body will react. Think of them as the brussel sprouts of medicine. They either agree with you or they don’t. There’s rarely a middle ground.

Moving on to the facts (this is kind of boring but actually important so i do apologise) the Pill interacts with some anti-epileptic drugs. These AEDs are called enzyme inducing and you can find a list here:  http://www.epilepsysociety.org.uk/contraception-and-epilepsy#.VoQKvPnJzIU

Normally AEDs are split in two categories: enzyme inducing and non-enzyme inducing. I was on Trileptal ( oxcarbazepine ) and later switched to Zebinix ( eslicarbazepine acetate ) - both enzyme inducing. For the most part it’s the enzyme inducing AEDs that cause most of the fuss by making your system metabolize the Pill quicker, therefore reducing its effectiveness. The unmistakable sign in the event is heavy spotting between periods. In my case it manifested as bleeding on and off pretty much all the time. You can try taking a higher dose of the Pill but it’s still a gamble. It’s not just the AED that’s at works, it’s your immune system and how your organism processes both drugs simultaneously. 

Still, when it comes to treating epilepsy, odds are you are on more than one drug and I am no exception. Enter the unique and fucked case of Lamictal (or Lamotrigine). Lamictal might be a non-enzyme inducing AED but its case is incredibly problematic. Though according to experts there is no hard proof, the Pill has shown to lower the lamotrigine level in one’s blood. I was on the Pill while treated with Zebinix and Lamictal which meant i was double screwed: on one hand the Zebinix was making the Pill ineffective and on the other hand the Pill was making the Lamictal ineffective, which to my horror, led to frequent seizures. Initially, my GP suggested we raise both dosages: take a higher dose of the Pill to keep me safe and increase my Lamictal levels to counterbalance this change and keep me seizure-free. The result was a shit-show. I experienced weekly seizures, random limb spasms and drowsiness due to the higher AED dose that i was on. Ultimately, I gave up on the Pill, re-adjusted my medication and had a chat with my GP about the next best thing. Post to follow as soon as I can!

[damefriday-blog]

Contraception and epilepsy: oh dear - Introduction

The idea of this string of posts first came to mind in the middle of a desperate google search when I was forced to type into the search engine these three words: contraception and epilepsy. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably done it yourselves and I think we can agree: The lack of information when it comes to viable options of contraception for young women with epilepsy is astonishing. Sure, there are the official instructions of epilepsy.org.uk, webmd and some scholarly articles on epilepsy with endearing footnotes that reminded me of Infinite Jest. We all know doctors are there to help us avoid the void that is the internet, give us advice and tell us what will suit us best. But in the end, despite and against their counselling, we’ll still do our own thing. In this case though I was thoroughly disappointed.

The truth is that nobody actually bothered to sit down and point out how few the choices of epileptics are when it comes to protecting themselves from an unwanted pregnancy. Being an undisputed pessimist I found myself more attracted to medical chat rooms where any statement from “I’ve started the pill and I have a seizure every day” to “I’ve had the coil fitted and since then I have gained 90 pounds” swiftly met its match. 

Before I start, I want to make something clear. The following posts are not meant to encourage people to have sex without condoms. I’m not going to underestimate your intelligence by stating the obvious. I’m writing this in the hope that it will relieve epileptics from that tide of information that’s truly overwhelming. So, perhaps I can offer some help and advice (as far as my personal experience goes) if you have epilepsy and you belong to one (or more) of the following groups:

a. You’re in a monogamous relationship and you want to have sex without condoms.

b. You suffer from painful, heavy periods and you want to monitor and control them.

c. You want to be super safe because you’re paranoid, so you’ve decided to use an additional contraceptive method.

Personally, I belong to all the above. I’m going to write two more posts: one will concern the combined oral contraceptive pill (usually called just “the Pill”) and the other one will focus on the IUD (or else hormonal coil) Mirena.