A Quick, Disjointed, and Incomplete Update: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

I’ve been meaning to write an update for days—weeks?—now. However, for the first chunk of this hospital stay, I didn’t feel well enough to do anything but sleep and pity myself, and now that I’m a little more functional, lying around all the time is making me lazy. And so I figured I better devote a few minutes to coming up with something semi-intelligent to say, especially now that there have been concrete developments.

Most importantly, I finally had a “big one.”

On Tuesday evening, I was standing next to my hospital bed, leaning on my husband for support and trying to remember how to bend my knees (I’ve been having weird trouble controlling my limbs for the last few days), when my brain decided to produce the first tonic-clonic seizure I’ve experienced during this “medical minibreak.”

It was reported to me after the fact that it differed from my typical ones. I won’t get into the details, except to say, “poor husband”; since I entered the clonic stage while still on my feet, he had to figure out how to ease me onto the bed. The things you do for love, huh?

Yesterday morning, the nurse manager who makes the rounds every day praised my seizure. “It was beautiful,” she said. “Extremely clear.” I was strangely  flattered. She then told me that the doctors now had everything they needed. I would be home within a week.

Yeah, right.

To make a long story short, the epileptologist currently in charge of the EMU came to see me at lunchtime today. He’s decided that I need to have a few more “high-quality” seizures before I can leave.

And this, my friends, is why I shouldn’t trust anything anyone tells me, unless I’ve independently verified it (kidding?).

As this hospital stay continues, I’m doing my best to have a “good attitude,” to remind myself that I’m making an investment in the rest of my life, giving myself the best chance of being seizure free one day. I can’t say that my attempts to self-soothe are always fully successful, but at least I’m making the effort, am closer than ever to the ultimate goal, have a little hedgehog friend to keep me company, and am now managing to keep most of my meals down.