Seizures

Seizures make me cry. Since early May Matilda has developed seizures. In the scheme of things ‘seizure-ish’, Matilda’s would currently be considered very mild. Many families are dealing with way more than we are . But despite my best efforts to convince myself otherwise, seizures change everything – subtle shifts through to absolute fault lines.

 

Luckily she has learnt how to swallow tablets & capsules!

Seizures mean that the small amount of freedom Matilda had won back over the past year has been eroded. We hang closer to her as she is less stable on her feet and ‘shadow’ her when she is with her friends in case she has a seizure.

Seizures mean that we have to fill our little girl with medication, that has three pages of side effects I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Most of the time we don’t know what is impacting on things like her speech – is it the seizures, the medication, fatigue? And you know what, neither do the doctors.

Seizures mean that at times she is so tired she can hardly function and our plans for slightly longer times at school may hit rocky ground (or at least how she is at home afterwards). Pushing dinner times out a little later or socialising with friends in the evening is becoming harder not easier (on the bad days).

Seizures mean that normal 10 year old girl activities need to be strategically managed – sleep overs, play dates and parties. Shorter, with mum doing the emergency medication talk or hovering in the background, leaving before all the others, only with one friend – never quite free.

Seizures mean lots more doctors appointments and not necessarily more solutions. We try to arrange ways that Matilda doesn’t hear the chat or discussion over outcomes/side effects/recent deterioration but there are times that this is hard to avoid.

Seizures mean  that Matilda has mentioned hating her body or being broken more often. She is tough and this only happens when she is at her absolute low-battery setting but on top of normal early-puberty issues, it strangles my heart.

Seizures mean that her 12 year old brother Reuben knows all about what to do in an emergency situation and that we have a sign on the fridge for what to say when you call for an ambulance.

Getting ready for a recent EEG

Seizures mean that we check how far it is to the nearest hospital and if they have a 24 emergency department before we go away. Our car recovery policy will get upgraded too in the event of a breakdown!

Seizures mean more talks with the teachers at her school and kids in her class. They have all proven that the more they know, the more supportive that can be.

Seizures mean that I have no way to forget the horrible night when she was first ill and a seizure almost took her. I think often, almost daily of the doctor at her head, keeping her airways open, telling me to keep talking to her, that she could hear me, as she shook on the bed. My tendency to overprotect her has gone through the roof and I am constantly fighting my inner urge to check on her, hold her hand, not let her go too far…….

Mum stands by trying to act cool but freaking out!

 BUT seizures mean we are still here. We are still in the game and prepared to do what ever it takes. This may be a temporary reality or for the rest of our lives. There are chances that it could become significantly worse or possibly better. Either way as a family and as a community we will roll with it, breath into it. Sadness and despair tap on my door. My yoga teacher read a beautiful quote from the poet/writer David Whyte from Consolations (link here)

Despair turns to depression and abstraction when we try to make it stay beyond its appointed season and start to shape our identity around its frozen disappointments. But despair can only stay beyond its appointed time through the forced artificiality of created distance, by abstracting ourselves from bodily feeling, by trapping ourselves in the disappointed mind, by convincing ourselves that the seasons have stopped and can never turn again, and perhaps, most simply and importantly, by refusing to let the body breathe by its self, fully and deeply. Despair is kept alive by freezing our sense of time and the rhythms of time; when we no longer feel imprisoned by time, and when the season is allowed to turn, despair cannot survive.

Breath, hope, step forward.