I've been thinking about M-Brane writer and friend Brandon Bell (issues #1 and #5, upcoming) off and on all day, and I decided I'd like to show some solidarity with him and come out as a person who also has some sort of undiagnosed neurological situation. Read Brandon's startling blog post about his recent event, my comment there about it, and then come back here for the rest of this post. I'll wait for you.
I feel very lucky that the similar episodes that I have been through (the one at 18 being "Worst Episode Ever") have been
few and have not recurred in full-on form since that last one half of my life ago. Reading Brandon's account of it brought back vividly the creeping fear of it, the near certainty that it will happen again someday. A few weeks ago, in fact, I felt it coming back. It started exactly like Worse Episode Ever. I started feeling nauseated, my vision seemed to darken and lose periphery, I felt some numbness and weird muscular twitches. Also, I lost the ability to speak properly (and that's a clumsy, dubious prospect for me anyway even under ideal conditions), both in the sense of my mouth not functioning correctly and also not being able to come up with words that make sense. I was sure that I was going to black out...but then it passed over me somehow, I stayed conscious, and after about an hour I was feeling reasonably normal again. And lucky.
So anyway, I feel a lot of sympathy for people who live with these kinds of seizure events all the time. It's horrifying to lose control of your body like that. And even though no there's no rational reason at all for this feeling, it made me feel humiliated and weak when it happened to me. And now that I said that out loud...I don't feel that way anymore. Amazing how that works!
The accompanying image is the first draft of the cover of M-Brane #5, leading off with Brandon's outstanding story "Abraham Discovers an Object Impenetrable to All Harm." I'll be announcing the issue's complete contents in a few days.
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3 comments:
*hugs* That IS spooky. I once had some kind of random back spasm (several years ago) and passed out for several minutes--there was absolutely no reason for it, which is what was the worst. :| They say everything is fine, but you gotta wonder... what if it happens again and there's no one around to help, or it's worse, etc? *shrugs*
I too have a lot of sympathy for anyone who has to live with that on a daily basis. (I've known some people prone to seizures for various reasons.) But I also admire how they get on with their lives regardless and make the best of things.
Glad talking about it helps. :)
Maybe these weird symptoms are just an undesirable side effect of our shared brilliance. Yeah! :)
I've been reading what I can find about gran mal, seizure, epilepsy... it's a weird diagnosis. Outside of some very specific types, it seems to be the catch-all diagnosis for seizures that reoccur without an obvious cause. I still feel odd a week later, but I think that could be more psychosomatic, worrying about it happening again, etc.
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