I have only had epilepsy since November of last year so I am rather unschooled about the condition, so any help, includng web site/book/etc recomendations as well as advice would be awesome!

My seizures are usually between 30seconds to 2 minutes of grand mal, and then out of the blue, a few months ago I had a grand mal that lasted 7.5 minutes. Ever since, I have slowly started noticing changes in my behavior and my ability to do things I used to be able to do. For example, I will forget very common words on a daily basis, forget how to spell common words, forget conversations I had or appointments I made, get frustrated easily, have a hard time focusing, etc. While the two events may be totally unrelated, I would doubt it since I really didn't experience any of those things prior to the long seizure.

My question is, is it possible that the seizure caused this? Is that a common effect of seizures? What types of seizures and situations usually cause this effect and can it be fixed? Will the symptoms likely get worse, or is this as bad as it will get? Has anyone else experienced this and what did you find to be helpful?

Any information would be appreciated. I am a very independant person and have had a really rough time with this disorder, I have found such a lack of support groups for epilepsy and so have been left to try to deal with it alone, and that hasn't been very helpful. If anyone out there lives in the new england area, or is even available to speak via phone once a week or something, please email me, it would be great to finally have someone to talk to about all this...

Thanks for the help!