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!
I'm currently prescribed five anticonvulsants. Five. Some are better than others, but each is its own special flower/beast, in terms of side-effect profile. That said, I'm grateful that I've found a combination of medications that's kept me out of the hospital since the summer.* Among the drugs currently inhabiting my blister pack is phenytoin (Dilantin), … Continue reading Dilantin, ER, Vomit: A(nother) Scattered Blog Post
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 kept forgetting that the Winter Olympics were going to happen this month until they started on Thursday night, at which point I immediately made my husband switch to the CBC. Men's figure skating was on, and as I stared, entranced, at that unitard-wearing athlete gliding, jumping, and spinning across the screen, I realized that, … Continue reading The Olympics Are On: Talk to You in Two Weeks
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
Yesterday at neuro rehab, I received the results of a (very long, multi-part) memory test that I completed with my occupational therapist last week. I'll cut right to the chase and reveal that I didn't do incredibly well. My OT was careful to sandwich the news: "You have lots of strengths; this test showed that … Continue reading That Elderly White Dude: Reflections on a Memory Test
Deep within the hospital at which I receive the majority of my care, there's a hallway featuring terracotta plaques bearing the names of individuals and organizations who/that donated to a fundraising campaign sometime in the 1980s or 1990s. The exact date slips my memory, but the style of the installation suggests that it wasn't in … Continue reading A Grateful Patient: Thanks in/for Retro Terracotta
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
Well, it's been an interesting year. I knew that 2017 wouldn't be devoid of challenges: it started, after all, with scheduled neurosurgery that had been looming over me for much of 2016. I didn't anticipate, though—I couldn't have anticipated—how many twists and turns I'd navigate from January (intracranial grids implanted, almost the entire month spent … Continue reading 2017 in Review: Looking Back, Looking Forward, Looking at the VNS Scar on My Neck Every Time I Look in the Mirror
De Morbo Sacro: Life and/with Epilepsy 