Beau Jackson

I had done quite a bit of posting – to air my worries as it were – but you know what?…it’s good to share the good news too.  Things seem to be getting a little better.

Elizabeth is definitely on the mend.  She does *not* want to lay around and rest, she wants to get outside and play.  She forgets that she’s still hurt, but gets the occasional reminder when somebody bumps her arm.  We keep telling her to go easy, but she must be using a different definition of “easy” than we are.  She has another appointment with the orthopedic surgeon today – I imagine she’ll have quite a few of these follow-ups to do x-rays on her elbow to ensure everything is mending correctly.  Very encouraging all-in-all.

My seizures are definitely coming under control.  Most days I have a handful (read: 10-20) of “shivers”, especially at the end of the day or during stressful times, but even if you were looking for them you’d never notice them.  I can feel them of course, but from the outside they’d be almost invisible.  I still have a bigger one once in a while but not daily any more.  Last Thursday (Friday? not sure), with the help of a couple of Benadryl, I slept through the entire night for the first time in about four months.  If you’ve never gone an extended period of time without a good nights sleep you don’t know how wonderful that really is!   I also got my blood tested last week to check the med-levels in it, so I hope to hear back on that today or tomorrow.  The doc may or may not increase my dosage depending on the results of that test.

I may still be on the emotional roller coaster – I may just be on an “up” part right now, but I’ll take it! ;)

…the medication is beginning to work.  The last three days have been very “light” days in terms of seizure activity.  Just what I call “shivers”.  None of the face-scrunching, shoulder-clenching stuff.  Today went really well – nothing at all until 2:00pm or so, then some very mild shivers.  I did have several “hard” seizures around 8:00pm which I assume is because I’m getting tired (being tired really triggers the seizures).

I feel like calling the neurologist and saying “crank up the dosage another 1000mg and lets get these suckers knocked out!”.  :)  That’s probably not a good idea, but I feel pretty optimistic all-in-all.

Yesterday was a good day for the most part.  Productive at work (that always makes me feel good) and I had two separate times where I felt “right”.  That’s a hard concept to explain.  Since I started having these seizures/tics/whatever they are, I have felt “wrong”.  But twice yesterday I said to myself, “I feel really good right now…I feel ‘right’”.

Today has not gone so well.  I was getting a ride to work with a co-worker, and that apparently isn’t going to work anymore.  Having to depend on other people to get around has got me pretty down.  For the first time in years I find myself wishing I lived in a larger city that had buses – and I really don’t care to ride the bus.

It’s been a lot of up and down for me over the last few weeks.  I started down…very very down.  Prozac has helped that tremendously, but then came the EEG and the confirmation of Epilepsy.  Ironically, that provided for some brief  “up time” because at least I had a diagnosis, and at least it wasn’t something psychological that I was doing to myself (and believe me, I worried about that and the implications a lot).

So then came waiting on the MRI and waiting on the results, lots of down there.  Then the results – super up (not having a brain tumor definitely qualifies as up!!!).

Now I’m feeling pretty down again.  Not being able to drive is taking some getting used to.  I’ve been trying to find info about people with seizures like mine, and how they relate to driving in particular.  It doesn’t look good.  I’m still hopeful that I’ll be able to drive again, but I can’t help but contemplate what life is going to be like without being able to drive.  I keep telling myself “yeah but I haven’t had any gran-mal or absence seizures, surely I’m different”, and then the part of my brain that does not live in denial chimes in with comments like “that’s true, but how many times have you read that seizures change?”.

I feel very broken at this point.  Not in a psychological sense (’cause the Prozac is still doing it’s job), but in a litteral, physical sense.  I feel like I’m somehow deffective and need to be repaired, like I’ve got a part worn out.  That is not a good feeling at all.

I think this blog may get to be a little bit “diary like” for a while.  It’s somewhat theraputic/cathartic to just write down what’s going through my head.  Sorry for the down post.  I’ll try to be “up” next time.

As my regular readers will have noticed (since I’ve been busy adding you as friends) I’ve been playing around with Facebook over the last few days.  This has answered the question “why hasn’t Jerome posted in so long?” for me – why?  Because he’s been posting on Facebook instead of his blog.  Sheesh…you try to keep up with peoples lives and they go and change the way the news is being distributed ;).

So why sign up with Facebook.  Mostly because I’ve come across Facebook profiles for people that I’ve known in my life who otherwise have no web presence, and I wanted to see what was going on with them.  I even found out my sister has a Facebook profile…who knew?

In other news, William has a(nother) new scar on his face.  That kid is really hard on himself.  He was twirling around, tripped on a pillow and slamed his cheek into the edge of the coffee table.  One trip to urgent care and $75 bucks later and his cheek is super-glued shut with some stuff they call “dermabond”.  I was told that the scar will be much smaller this way than it would have been with stitches.

We also got three new lambs this morning – two girls out of DuClair and a single girl out of Piper.  All in all a busy weekend!