What’s Been Happening (ICU, Etc.)

This will be short: my brain still isn’t working at top capacity, and I don’t want to look back at my blog posts at some future date and be embarrassed by an entry with an abundance of typos and scattered thoughts. At the same time, I feel it’s important to provide an update since lots has been going on.

To start with, last Tuesday, I had an eighteen-minute seizure in a TTC station. My seizures normally last a minute and a half, two minutes or so tops. My husband thus called 911 (luckily, there was cell signal where this abnormally long seizure occurred). From the emergency room, I was admitted to the ICU.

Over the next while, things escalated. I don’t remember all that happened, as is the nature of a brain affected by seizures and thought-altering meds; I do know that I had an hour-and-a-half-long seizure a few days in and that it got to the point that a medically induced coma was considered. I was stabilized, however, with large doses of Ativan and Dilantin and another drug whose name escapes me. In the meantime, my mother flew across the country to be with me. I have scattered recollections of my time in the ICU, during which I was heavily medicated to help stop my seizures. I was transferred to a step-down unit and then to the EMU after four or so days. I’m still there, being monitored and having my medications adjusted.

This has been one of the most intense experiences of my life. I’m still processing what’s happened and what continues to happen. The unpredictability of my brain is startling; that it would betray me in such a dramatic manner is alarming. How can I continue to live normally knowing that my neurons are capable of performing such an act? I owe it to myself, though, to try.