I am epileptic, and recently my condition has taken a turn for the worse. While I have yet to be "formally" diagnosed by an EEG (in fact the one I DID have a few weeks back came back normal, though since routine EEGs are so short this means little to nothing), I've had seizures for years, all partial up until last Thursday, July 2, when I had my first grand mal seizure (which was triggered by strobe lights at a concert); since then I've also had an atonic seizure and another partial seizure this Thursday that landed me in the emergency room as it happened at work with no readily apparent cause and scared my boss.

Quite honestly I would rather skip the prolonged EEG that I will likely have to endure for a "formal" diagnosis - I cannot afford to miss several days of work and I likely will go insane if I have to spend several days in a hospital. I am absolutely terrified of hospitals. However, this is the least of my worries.

I am already on enough medication to knock out a horse. Seriously, I feel stoned - and I don't know how people get addicted to this. I hate this feeling.

In California, it is illegal to drive if you have uncontrolled epilepsy - and you're not considered "controlled" unless you've gone at least six months without a seizure. Needless to say I have not met this requirement. This puts my moving plans on hold - and as a result negatively impacts my access to good medical care; there's one hospital in my town and the doctors here don't know their ass from their elbow (I swear, I left the emergency room feeling worse than when I went in). My personal physician is in a neighboring town; it's always a massive ordeal to get there as it's not really a town that can be driven to from where I live (I live and work on an island actually). With this issue becoming obvious, I need to move closer to my personal physician (or at least any competent doctor, which is something I don't think my town has ever seen) worse than ever - so it's a bit problematic that it brings transportation problems along with it.

I've been having issues with one particularly unsupportive friend as well - I mean, I'm not going to ask to have everyone's life revolve around me, but it's kinda salt in the wound to have a "friend" emoing at me about routine medical exams when I'm going through medical mysteries including unknown type epilepsy. She's also been known to leave me alone while I'm still shaky and unstable from a seizure - essentially she only seems to care while I'm ACTUALLY having it. She and I haven't really gotten along too well in recent months...with this newest development I'm really considering cutting it off with her.

This also interferes with my plans for the future - I am a musician. I do not know what I can tolerate in the way of flashing lights at this point. Hell, I've been told to look away from ambulance and police beacons, just to be on the safe side. I know I'm gonna want to keep the light effects to a minimum for lives - I already knew this, both for my sake (I already had slight problems before after all) and for the audience's sake (epilepsy affects nearly one out of every 100 people). However, we will need SOMETHING - and in fact, one live I already have planned out does require a mild flickering effect. Luckily for this one I can just look away and it's by far the worst of anything I have planned and it can easily stay that way - but needless to say, if things are worsening, this could be...problematic.
It's a damn good thing I do most of the planning for my band's lives, that's for sure, otherwise this could be far worse - but it's still a bit of a problem.

Is there anyone here who knows something on anything that could help me here? Either on the distance from a competent doctor, on epilepsy, on any of my related issues? Any advice is greatly appreciated.