It's a pretty normal Saturday in hospital land. I've eaten many things and drunk many Ketocals. I've socialized a little (something I wasn't doing much of when my postictal psychosis was at its worst) and considered building a new LEGO set. I've had a seizure. My seizure frequency means that I wake up knowing that … Continue reading A Glimmer of Hope for “a Challenging Case of Very Intractable Epileptic Seizures”
As Canada locks down to prevent the spread of COVID-19, Toronto—the city in which I live—has taken bold, necessary steps to “flatten the curve.” Elementary and secondary schools are closed. Public libraries are closed. Most retail outlets are closed. Universities have transitioned to online learning. Lots of other stuff has happened in the gap between … Continue reading A COVID-19 Post to Add to the Millions in Your Inbox (Please Read!)
Hey! 👋 It’s me with another of my incredibly sporadic updates. There’s been a lot going on in my brain over the past few weeks, so naturally I'm choosing now, when I’m most likely to commit egregious spelling and grammar errors and to produce a longwinded and disjointed post, to break my blog silence. If … Continue reading Another Update
For several weeks, I kept going back to the same now-musty post in my drafts folder, making minor changes, staring at what I’d written, and then inevitably becoming overwhelmed and distracted by other tasks, 9.5 times out of 10 a meal or a bottle of Ensure Plus. It was time to acknowledge that the longer, … Continue reading Eight Weeks, and All I Have to Show for Them Is a Mostly Unedited Blog Post (and lots of empty Ensure Plus bottles and many seizures and significant progress)
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I was supposed to travel to Ottawa this weekend to attend an event that I'd been looking forward to for months. While acknowledging that there's basically no chance that you don't see where I'm headed with this, I'll nonetheless take the liberty of allowing myself a dramatic, bold-and-italics-style reveal. No Ottawa for me. I'll admit … Continue reading Not in Ottawa/Obnoxiously Festive
Yes, I mean news news, not news of the personal-and-complainy variety. Yesterday I ran across this article about five-year-old Emma, who's the first patient in Canada to have the most recently released VNS model implanted. When she was seven months old, Emma was diagnosed with the seizure disorder infantile spasms (IS); her parents are hosting an … Continue reading Some Positive VNS News in the News
It was my birthday last Saturday. I'm another year older! (Yay?) Yes, I've acquired some additional signs of my impending old age over these past twelve months. I've also, however, gained some real wisdom. (Yay for real this time.) It's been quite the year. I won't claim not to be the person I was in … Continue reading Another Year Wiser(ish), Very Thankful
Since my last post was serious and related to epilepsy for once, it's as good a time as any to return to what I secretly want all (or most of) my entries to be: ice-cream reviews. You might think that the words "ice cream" and "corn" don't go together. I'm here to tell you that … Continue reading Ice-Cream Sunday (Groan): Corn Edition
This video and article about a young girl (Pepper) with epilepsy whose parents were told that she couldn't ride an accessible GO Transit car popped up in my social media feeds a few days ago. As you might imagine, it made me so, so angry. In the interests of encouraging you to click this link so … Continue reading Epilepsy in the News: GO Transit, Questions of (in)Accessibility, and an Angry Blogger
