Another AlphaBytes entry... with my thoughts on bravado...
I started thinking about my entry from a couple days back about my epilepsy and I realized that I didn't really give remotely the full story. It's all well and good to put a brave face on, cheerio, pip-pip, I had a seizure, and I have a sense of humor, ha ha ha... but that doesn't show you what happens, not really.
This is what happens. This is what my last seizure was really like:
I'm at work. I'm going through my day. Everything is completely and utterly normal. Lunch rolls around and I wander down to the cafeteria where my choices are Veal Osso Bucco - from a cafeteria, mind you - or a hamburger. I take the safe option, get myself a cheeseburger and a bag of Fritos and head back up to my cubicle. I'm in the middle of a pretty good book and I figure I can read and eat. I start eating my burger - I notice that it tastes a little different from usual - they're using thicker burgers. I go back and forth between bites of burger, reading, and wandering the weddingchannel message boards.
And then all of a sudden, I'm on the floor. Betsy, the woman from the next cube is kneeling next to me. There's Fritos all over the place and half a burger on the floor. The wall of the cube is pushed way out and I ache, I ache all over. My head hurts and my back is shrieking in pain. I have NO idea why I am on the floor. Betsy has to tell me that I've had a seizure, because I don't automatically know. I repeatedly apologize. A nurse comes in, a security guard, some EMTs... they ask me if I know where I am - I do; they ask me if I want to go home - I do; they ask me for my fiance's phone number - I have no idea what it is. It takes me a moment to remember what my fiance's name is, and that upsets me so much that I start to tear up. One of my co-workers, Cheryl, has to look up Rod's number and track him down.
While all this is going on, I am still sitting on the floor in my cubicle. I'm conscious the whole time, but I'm hazy - time jumps for me and I can't recall it all clearly afterwards. For example, even now, I have no recollection of there being any EMTs or security guards there. I am going off what other people have told me about the event, but I don't know. I don't remember sitting in the lobby afterwards telling the receptionist how my back hurt. I don't remember apologizing so many times that Betsy threatened to punch me. I don't remember banging my head and I don't have any idea what I did to myself during the seizure to make my back still hurt five days later, but it does.
So yeah, a couple entries back, I blogged that "Seizures sorta suck." No. They don't sorta suck. They're awful. They leave you feeling powerless and miserable. They tire you physically and mentally. They make you want to turn your back on the world and go live in a cave so that you don't have to be around people who might potentially see you have one. They sometimes have long-term physical side effects, the likes of which you would never consider possible, and ultimatley, seizures are just plain depressing.
But the thing is this: I put the brave face on in that other entry because I have to live with the seizures. I have learned that having a sense of humor about my life is the best way for me to get through it, so I apply it to all things, including my epilepsy. Ultimately, I can't live my life if I live in constant fear of having seizures or if I am just forever lamenting how awful seizures are. No matter how bad they are, the fact is that in my life they just are. They're a fact of my life that I have come to accept, of necessity.
But as easy as it is for me to brush off the epilepsy, maybe providing a clearer picture is more useful in the end... I don't know. You tell me.