A real bad trip...
I woke up with a devastating migraine. Migraines are one of the most common accompanying effects of Epilepsy. I moved around the place in dazed confusion and the emotional storm of the past few days still raging unabated within me, trying to get ready for church, breaking into tears over and over again. My soul seemed lost somewhere in a deep, black hole and I felt like I simply couldn't go on. Concentration was impossible. Everything seemed too hard for me. Life itself seemed a burden too heavy for me to bear. The thought of going to work the next day- or ever again for that matter- was just too much to bear. I longed with all my heart and soul to ride far out into the desert and never come back. All the while I struggled to remember that terrible, torturous, merciless emotional storms are simply a normal part of the bad phases and that it would pass, sooner or later. That knowledge is purely theoretical when you're stuck in the middle or one of those storms however. That is the utmost of weakness, hopelessness, and depression. You feel like you just cannot go on. Even laying down and closing your eyes takes too much energy- energy you do not have.
At some point my fiancee came into the kitchen while I was struggling to make a sandwich, tears flowing down my face. She took me in her arms and held me for a while, telling me how brave I was to keep working with such an illness, to stay as active as I was, to keep doing my best.
Normally I would have stayed home from church feeling as bad as I was but I had agreed to play the main role in a sketch and there was to be a meeting after church to plan the filming of the sketch, and I had promised to be there. I have always been a man of my word and do not like the idea of changing that now, Epilepsy or not. Now an epileptic as bad off as I am actually shouldn't be agreeing to play roles in sketches or promising to be places at certain times but I always promise all kinds of things to all kinds of people, and quite often end up basically "crawling there on all fours", dazed and confused and emotionally exhausted- yet too proud to admit my weakness and trying to put on a good show.
So I got ready as best I could, got on my bike and rode to church. It didn't take long for the complex partial seizures to start and they came in wave after wave for the rest of the day to compliment the migraine. I didn't last more than five or ten minutes in the sanctuary before I had to struggle out into the foyer, eyes fixed on the floor ahead of me with as much concentration as I could muster. There I stayed and waited the service out. I got that meeting behind me as fast as I could and went back home to bed. Today, Monday, I called in sick to work.
The seizures aren't the real problem, not since the medication keeps them short and relatively light. The migraines aren't the biggest problem either since they're usually not that monstrous either. It's the emotional storms during the bad phases that are the real problem. They are so unbelievably terrible that I can hardly describe how terrible they are. Sometimes I can steel myself against them, hunker down and wait them out if I see them coming but all to often they catch me by surprise and pull me down before I know what's happening, and I have no chance against them. They hijack me and take me on a ride of terror...
To do it right I should have gotten a sick slip for the three weeks I was taking antibiotics as well as ten days afterwards. To do it right I should get a sick slip for two weeks every time my neurologist changes my medication. To do it right I should get a sick slip every time I get the flu- or rather at the first indication that the flu is going around. To do it right I should get a sick slip every time I have an especially bad migraine. But I can't do that! How long do you think my employer would continue to employ me if I did what I should do? I really don't have any other choice but to keep on going for as long as I can and hope I make it through to full retirement.
I'm just in one of the bad phases at the moment. Too many things came all at once: change in medication, borrelirose, antibiotics, intestinal flu. It will pass sooner or later. Things will go back to normal. Normal is manageable. Two or three short, relatively light CPS every day and a few not too bad migraines per week. Normal has no emotional storms. I think I could live with anything as long as those emotional storms stay far, far away from me...
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