Shake, rattle and roll
Rita Rudner once commented, upon hearing of a woman in labor for over 24 hours, “I can’t think of anything I love doing that I’d want to do for 24 hours straight!”
How long would you choose to have a seizure? A minute, ten? How about 72? How about having your brain taken over by demons of the random electrical firing kind and just going crazy for 72 minutes? Sound like fun?
Ok, let’s not think about that. Let’s think about it happening to your adored daughter. Tonight. And nothing stops it. Enough Valium to fell Secretariat does not faze the demons. So you hold her. While she shakes, while she cries. Seventy two minutes … been taught to time them for absolutely no reason.
Could call some doctor on call. Seeing that the only mention of her diagnosis, and that of her brother, in all the medical research is pretty much based on them, the first two diagnosed with this shit, well, doctor’s don’t really help. And seizures, well, I have the same tools here that they do.
Yeah, most schools of thought say the seizures don’t cause damage.
F–k that, I never did like school much.
Sometimes all we can offer another person is our presence, painful as the situation may be and even as it breaks our hearts…holding your daughter in the midst of seizures is one of the most loving acts I have ever read…thank you for all that you do for her. In a weird way, I am grateful for the growth she is stirring within you even as you kick and scream and curse all that is going on…
I find it surprising that some say that seizures dont do damage when in fact studies show that after 20 years of convulsive seizures, the brain is noticeably smaller.
Don’t need 20 years to do it. In the first year of my son’s life (he’s now 2), the many seizures (eventually Infantile Spasms) he had during the day (and night), and hypsarrhythmia caused the good hemisphere of his brain to essentially stop growing and the other to atrophy.
Yippy skippy.