Life always has twists and turns and you never know what to expect. Over two years ago, I had my first seizure while sitting on my couch next to my younger brothers. I woke up while getting put into an ambulance not knowing what was going on. I couldn't believe it when my mom told me what happened. I had another seizure working about a week later on Black Friday, which led to a diagnosis of epilepsy.
Flash forward almost two years: after having multiple more seizures, trying multiple medications, and wondering when I would be "normal," my doctor suggested I stay in the hospital while my doctors force me to have seizures in order to figure out where in my brain they are happening and to determine if brain surgery was an option for me. Being stuck in a hospital for a week was torture: silence, loneliness, and many tests, but my doctors figured out where my seizures were happening and felt I could have brain surgery that could potentially get rid of my seizures. Brain surgery is typically something that involves cutting a piece of the skull off the head and taking a piece of the brain out of the head which takes months of recovery. This is scary, but something I was ready for if it meant I could be "normal" again.
Next I met my brain surgeon who suggested I had a more minor surgery where they used an MRI to help see the parts of my brain that caused the seizures and he would use a laser to get rid of them. This only had a week recovery which was much more manageable, but with the multiple locations of my seizures, this had a 60% chance of getting rid of my seizures. I decided to do this.
After surgery, I felt terrible, I wanted to curl up in a ball and do nothing. I couldn't eat without throwing up for a day or two. I couldn't sleep and my head was a mess. It was hard to get back to myself: I remember feeling like my head wasn't mine, like it was secretly trying to fix itself. I have no idea what happened, but I needed tons of Tylenol to be able to function. My eyes began to swell and I'm still having difficulties seeing out of one of them and the headaches are finally starting to go away.
All of this has been so hard, so much harder than I expected it to be, but about three weeks later and I am almost back to myself. Through all of my recovery, I had my amazing friend, boyfriend, and family by my side to help me through this. Thank you for everything you all have done to help me through all this, because I know I needed you, I know I was a mess and needed a hand, and I know without your help I wouldn't have been able to get through it all. Thank you for getting me slush when I couldn't eat, taking me out for the first time in public, talking to me when I didn't want to be alone in bed, and giving me emotional support during my meltdowns and pain.
Now I wait, I wait to see if this surgery fixed me. Now I hide the bald part of my head and the cuts, now I wait until I see if I'll have another surgery. The one thing I know is that I have you all to be there for me and I will always be grateful for you all.
