People outside Michigan wouldn't know it, but WMU is really artsy. Name your art. There's a major for that. Aha.
So there are these Creative Writing Awards held for the writer-type students with four categories (Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Drama). I didn't have enough time to whip any of my stories or plays into shape, so I turned in a nonfiction piece about the time I went to the ER. It's a really funny story. And here it is if you would like to read it.
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I would hate having epilepsy if my seizures weren’t so hilarious. I either have myoclonic seizures, which are basically twitches with flair, or absence seizures. I can’t remember having absence seizures, so I don’t know what those are like.
After I was diagnosed in 2005, my brain refused to cooperate with the various medications. Keppra had me swinging moods every ten minutes. Topamax tried so hard to keep the seizures under control. The key word there was “tried”. Around the time I started KVCC in 2007, Dr. Fain switched me again to Lamictal. For a month or so, things went brilliantly. It didn’t screw around with my moods and I stopped “spazzing out”.
Then one night in late September, I stayed up until one in the morning, which would not have been a big deal if my alarm weren’t set for 7 AM, and if lack of proper sleep weren’t one of my triggers.
I woke up the next morning with a dull headache and the feeling that sparks were flying in my head. This was normal – just an aura warning me that if I didn’t take my meds soon, I was about to spazz out.
I took my medication with some difficulty because my hands kept shaking, and expected that to be the end of it.
But not today, oh no, not today, because I was stupid and deprived myself of sleep. In fairness, I really expected the seizures to stop by the time I got out of my first class.
This did not happen, of course. I had a few small seizures during English, but kept fidgeting so people wouldn’t notice.
They’re going to stop soon, I kept thinking.
Just keep calm and stay focused on something. When I got out of my seat as class ended, my knees buckled. I caught the table just before I fell, and nobody had seen it happen.
That’s when I started to realize that my seizures weren’t screwing around.
Because I was stupid and too stubborn to admit that something was horribly wrong with my head, I went to the cafeteria to finish some math homework. There were three hours until my next class and I figured that this would all be over by then. There was just one problem. I couldn’t do my math homework because my hands kept shaking. I was literally unable to form a legible letter or number. I could handle falling out of chairs, but not being able to carry out a task that basic terrified me.
After a few more pathetic attempts at writing, I gave up and did the only thing I could do. I stared at my math homework and willed it to finish itself. I tried this for a couple minutes before my best friend Kassy walked up. I must have looked like I was about to burst out crying (which was true) because she asked what was wrong.
“I can’t do my homework because I keep having seizures…”
Kassy stared at me for a moment. “What?”
So I explained what had been happening. When Kassy asked me why I was even at school, I used the sad excuse that, “I thought they would go away!” We called my mom, who said that if the seizures didn’t stop within fifteen minutes, then I had to go to the emergency room.
The seizures seemed to take that as a challenge. Instead of “
Cut it out,” they heard, “I wonder how many times I can spazz out in a minute!” When I started having seizures every two seconds – literally – it was obvious that it was time to go to the emergency room.
Kassy found her cousin to drive us there, seeing as someone needed to keep an eye on me in case I had a grand mal seizure. It should have taken us twenty minutes to get to Bronson’s emergency room. With Danielle, it took us fifteen, and that was only because none of us were that familiar with the maze of one-way streets.
When we found the emergency room, Danielle dropped Kassy and me off at the door while she parked. I stumbled in and found that I didn’t really know what to say to the nurse at the front desk except, “I keep having seizures.”
It was admirable how the nurse managed to look so bored. “OK. Can I get your name and information?” she asked. After we had gone through the ER niceties, they put me in a wheelchair and had us wait for ten minutes or so. I started to relax because I wasn’t having seizures every few seconds, and because it was obvious that I was not going to make it to math class.
Another nurse came to wheel me to one of the rooms. He asked me some general questions about the seizures as we weaved through the hallways before we stopped at one room in the boonies of the ER. The bed was set up with side rails to keep me from falling. As I started to get out of the wheelchair, my knees buckled again, but I caught myself on the bed. After the nurses made sure I wasn’t dead, they told me to change into one of those horrible hospital gowns.
Those things are tricky. There is no indication which side is the front, and you have to tie it shut. The whole time I tried to figure it out, I wondered why they didn’t just make one that you could slip over your head. It would make much more sense.
My parents showed up after I had been there for a half hour or so. They tried their best to act like the whole thing wasn’t freaking them out. Kassy and Danielle left to get food, and Kassy promised to get me a donut. Donuts are good.
I was still having seizures too frequently for their liking, so they decided that the best thing to do was to give me a shot of Adavan. Like most rational people, I hate shots. When they said that it was also a pill, I had to protest. “Why can’t I have the pill?”
But they wouldn’t let me have the pill because “Pills don’t work as quickly.” I was ready to call shenanigans on the whole thing, except that made sense.
The needle required for the Adavan was roughly the size of the Empire State Building. I could be exaggerating here. When I saw it, I asked if they were sure that they couldn’t give me the pill. They were sure.
I relaxed the best I could. Needles are always worse if you’re expecting them to kill you. In spite of that, the shot was like a tour of the seventh circle of Hell. I wept like a small child.
They were right, though. The shot worked very quickly. Within an hour, the seizures had completely stopped and I was about ready to fall asleep. By 7 PM, I was back home sleeping.
A week later, they upped my medication levels from 100 mg twice a day to 150 mg. Also, I learned that I can’t function on only six hours of sleep.
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Hope you enjoyed that if you read it. If you didn't, here's
a list of Neil Gaiman facts.
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