Sunday Night in the ER

I’ll start with a disclaimer: for obvious reasons, my memories of the event that’s the topic of this post are kind of spotty, so I’m relying on witnesses (i.e., my husband) for much of what makes up the following. We’re going to have to go ahead and assume that I wasn’t being trolled when the episode was reported to me the next day and, for that matter, that my brain, heavily medicated at the time and—let’s be honest—still pretty darn medicated, isn’t trolling us all now.

With that out of the way, I’ll proceed.

On Sunday night, I had a seizure and hit my head on the kitchen floor. My husband decided that the safest thing to do, especially given the current state of my brain and skull, was to go to the ER. Just, you know, to make sure that I wasn’t going to die. All that good stuff.

He called one of our best Toronto friends, who met us at the hospital (thank you!). After I was triaged and registered, a pleasant nurse very nicely inserted an IV while I was still in the waiting area, on the off chance I’d need something quick, and gave me some sublingual lorazepam to prevent further seizures. Not long later, I was taken back to a bed. Thanks to having a hefty dose of lorazepam in my system, having just hit my head, and still being postictal, I was soon dozing.

For reasons of laziness, and since this post is essentially a few bits of info that I’ve tried to stretch into something coherent, I’ll now switch to bullet points.

Over the next few hours, from the relative comfort of my acute-care bed, I

• had an EKG;
• had a CT scan;
• ate some Mini Oreos (I unfortunately don’t remember how delicious they were, but I found the empty package in my purse the next day and can only imagine how much I enjoyed them);
• asked the doctor if I could stay at home instead of coming to the hospital if I hit my head like this in the future (he apparently gave me a funny look and was like, “Um, no”); and
• was given pain medication and Gravol through my IV, making me even sleepier than I had already been and likely contributing to the fact that I subsequently
• took a weird number of pictures of random things, including several delightful candids of my husband that I won’t share for his benefit. Suffice it to say that postictal, prescription-drugged me has a great eye for photography.

After doctors had verified that there wasn’t anything going on in my brain that needed immediate attention—I had a concussion, but no bleeds—and that they weren’t going to cure my epilepsy overnight in the ER, which they had at first seemed eager to do (frustrating my husband, who apparently kept explaining, when asked if I’d missed my meds, or if I was particularly stressed out, etc., that he didn’t bring me in because of the seizure itself, a pretty normal occurrence chez nous, but only because I’d taken a hit to the head), everyone relaxed. Since I had a fast-approaching appointment with my epileptologist, who could go through the particulars of what’d happened and offer almost-immediate follow-up care, they discharged me around 5 a.m.

All in all, the whole thing went as well as it possibly could, both for me (thank you, husband and friend for your role in that; thank you, poor memory, which allows me to forget potentially traumatic stuff like this almost right after it happens) and for my husband, who had a support person there for him, which, he told me, made an incredible difference. ERs can be lonely places, especially when it’s not yet clear how things’ll pan out. Sometimes, you just need a friend, and I’m glad that my husband was able to call one.

I’ll take this opportunity to thank our entire support network. We’re so lucky to have friends and family who’ve been so good to us this year in our time of need. We truly couldn’t have done this—we truly couldn’t do this—without you. There’ve been definitely ups and downs, unexpected twists and turns, but the constant has been knowing that we have an amazing, steady group of people looking out for us. I’m aware that not everyone is so fortunate.

We love you guys.