As of last Thursday, and after two rounds of treatment, I'm officially finished my neuro day-hospital program. It feels super good. Time to reflect! Given my tendency to worry that I've plateaued or am plateauing in my recovery, I've found it important, especially over the past month or so, to keep reminding myself that I've made … Continue reading Graduation!
If I'm not mistaken, my last post, about travelling with my VNS, ended with something about how I was starting to get anxious about the trip back to Toronto. At the time I wrote it, I was mostly joking. It turned out, however, that those simple words were enough to jinx the homeward voyage. Not … Continue reading A Delayed Update about Delayed Travel
I've never consistently tracked my seizures. Here's where, before continuing with this blog post, I make excuses for my shortcomings as a seizure diarist. First, there's the memory thing. If I have a partial seizure before bed, when they usually occur, I sometimes have to be told the next morning that it happened since I'm … Continue reading Above Average
Remember the post—I think it's this one—in which I scoffed at how my epileptologist had warned me that I'd feel a "big jolt" when he programmed my VNS and then the sensation ended up being more of a big ’ol nothing, to the point that I was concerned that there was something wrong with my … Continue reading And Behold, a Jolt!
I realize that since I live in Ontario, I have no business being surprised by super-cold temps in January. The last week or thereabouts, though, has been cold-weather-warning cold, let's-not-leave-the-house cold, three-layers-and-still-not-comfortable cold. So yeah, it's been incredibly cold, in case that wasn't clear from the previous paragraph. This quasi-arctic weather—and I say this as … Continue reading It’s Really, Really Cold, and Seizure Me Doesn’t Seem to Know or Care
Since the last time I blogged, I've made steady progress in the direction of adjusting to life with a VNS device implanted, cyborg-style, in my chest: I went to my family doctor and found a better solution for my nausea. I've almost completely eliminated ongoing pain by managing it with a combination of ibuprofen and … Continue reading Vanessa
I got home from a trip with my father last Tuesday afternoon. Our vacation was lovely: a perfect mix of relaxing, spending time with family, and being distracted from my upcoming surgery. Though I had a few seizures, we had a safety plan in place, and it worked exactly as it was supposed to. The … Continue reading Post-Vacation, Pre-Op Business/Busyness
Over the course of two days, it's abruptly turned from sundress-and-Birkenstocks weather to sweater-and-sneakers season. The change hasn't been entirely unwelcome; there's only so much late-September sweating I can do before agonizing over global warming starts to interfere with my enjoyment of the sunshine. It has, however, resulted in some interesting-to-me (almost definitely boring-to-you) reflections. … Continue reading It’s the End of September, and I’m Not Freaking Out
I'm a little late—what else is new?—with this, but I thought I'd write a bit about my latest visit to the neuro ward, a.k.a. my home away from home this year. First: I've been out for a while now, so yay! In fact, with the medication adjustment done in hospital, I'm super stable. In fact, … Continue reading Belated Update: Another Visit to 5B (Yeah, I Know)
Forty-five seconds. A blip, and likely an inevitable one, after which I rolled over and went to sleep. I'm making a real effort to convince myself that forty-five seconds mean nothing, but they keep tossing around my head, unwilling to simply be what they were—one complex partial seizure among dozens I've had this calendar year. … Continue reading Forty-Five Seconds
