The fact that I’m home, in a new home I’d never stepped foot in (rolled into?) before last Sunday, is almost surreal. Sleeping in the same room as my husband? Eating at the same table? What is this? A beautiful, deeply satisfying, work in progress. As you likely anticipated, there’s a catch, for with the … Continue reading Home New Home
That’s right, friends. In approximately an hour and after nine months, give or take, I’ll be discharged. I’d be lying if I claimed that I’m not a little nervous. Change, especially change this big, is hard. As I wrote about in much greater detail in my last post, there are major ways in which my … Continue reading Happy Home Day!
I’ve once again let enough time elapse between posts that anxiety about how much has happened—more material for those blog entries that I always promise but never quite get around to writing—has made producing anything at all feel too overwhelming. Today, though, I somehow worked up the courage to start with a short update and … Continue reading Big Changes in the Works
I’m lying on a stretcher in the preoperative care unit waiting for my VNS surgery. What better time to write a blog post? (I finished it, however, a few days later.) As I mentioned in my previous entry, last week was a doozy. Most notably, on Tuesday we had a team meeting in which I … Continue reading Big Changes, Minimal Acceptance
Well, that was a week. From last Tuesday to last Friday, I received difficult news or experienced something difficult, or both, every day. In this post, I’ll write about what was/is, in many ways, the easiest to process and one of the most time-sensitive. (“Time-sensitive” probably isn’t the right word choice here, but I don’t … Continue reading Read the Room, Vanessa
I have a new body part. (That’s what you call an ankle-foot orthotic, right?) Acquiring it took time (of which I have near-endless amounts) and patience (of which I have almost none). Since the orthotic is custom made, the orthopedist had to come to take a plaster mould of my foot and leg and carefully … Continue reading AFO
Just over a week before Christmas, I had a seizure and needed to be brought to an acute-care hospital. The next day, still in the ICU, I had another seizure, tried to get out of bed, fell, and broke my hip, an injury requiring surgery. A few days later, I went into status epilepticus again … Continue reading Christmas
So much has happened since I last wrote that I got too overwhelmed to write anything at all. And then what would likely be immediately obvious to most people popped into my head: it’s possible to update in bits and pieces rather than all at once. So here’s a bit. Or a piece. (You decide.) … Continue reading A Bit or a Piece
I’ve been at rehab for over two weeks. I’ve settled in and already feel as if I’m making progress, though I’ll admit that, being the impatient person I am, I get frustrated that I’m not a specimen of perfect human health already. I try to consistently look back and reflect on where I was a … Continue reading Steady(ish) She Goes
I met A through an epilepsy advocacy group to which we both belonged. I don’t remember how or why, but we soon became penpals, frequently exchanging letters and small gifts through the mail. This continued for years. I grew accustomed to happiness and gratitude bubbling up my throat when an intricately-decorated envelope—inevitably including a lengthy … Continue reading For A
De Morbo Sacro: Life and/with Epilepsy 