epilepsy Archives - Adulting: Second- Half

Empathy Machines

Before I get to what I really want to write about today, this:

“Reading is an empathy-generating machine.” – Dr. Vivek Murthy

Isn’t this the truth? When we are having conversations, we are typically taking turns waiting to talk. Our conversations have a tendency to veer off-topic. But when you are reading, it’s just you and the words which you are reading. And written words tend to be more soulful, more thought-out, more vulnerable, more honest than everyday conversations. Reading really helps you to understand how someone else feels about their experiences. Empathy is being able to answer the question: “How do you think this makes me feel?” for someone else, other than yourself. Reading gives you time to absorb and to understand the words, and to make conclusions about the words, without getting defensive or argumentive or confused. I absolutely love to read and empathy is a wonderful by-product of reading.

And also before I get to what I really want to write about today, this:

Credit: @woofknight, X

“Oh to have impacted someone so much that they find bits of your soul and hold the memory of you in things and places when you’re not around.” Isn’t this a beautiful part of the human experience? Isn’t it wonderful to have people (and pets) in your life who come to mind often, even when they are not around. And isn’t it also great to be the person who someone is reminded of, when they see or experience certain things? These are the types of aspects of living life, that my soul crushes on, hard.

Okay, finally to what I planned to write about today:

Yesterday, our youngest son called me around 11 am. And my heart fell to the floor. I knew that my son was at work, my kids rarely call me (texting is king), and also, he has epilepsy. Thankfully my son was fine, but he was letting me know that he had just gotten an emailed letter stating that his longtime neurologist/epitologist’s practice was no longer taking my son’s health insurance.

This was the final push, which we have long-known was coming, to force us to go about finding my son a new practioner. His neurologist is getting close to retirement age, he practices in a town three hours from where our son lives, and he is technically a Pediatric Neurologist. Our son turns 24 at the end of the year.

Already I have a lump in my throat, writing this. Our son was 14 when he was diagnosed with epilepsy. He started with the small seizures called “absence seizures” or “petit mal” seizures which had probably been going on longer than we think. I often thought that my son was ignoring me or distracted with daydreaming, which I know is not out of the realm of things that teenage boys do. (he has two older brothers) However, the summer that he was diagnosed with epilepsy, our daughter and I picked him up from a summer camp (where he had gotten very little sleep) and my son’s disjointed, disorganized, “filled with stalls and stares and pauses” stories about the camp made it clear that something just wasn’t right. Later that night, I found some videos of children having absence seizures on “YouTube” and my stomach filled with dread. I took our son to our beloved pediatrician the next day only to have him confirm my fears, and to quickly recommend one of the best pediatric neurologists in town.

It took a long while to see Dr. W. He had quite the waiting list of people from in town, and from out town, who wanted to consult with him. We went to see his younger associate first, and while this young man was fresh out of medical school, and was eager and obviously brilliant, he spoke entirely too fast, and too matter-of-factly, to parents who were quickly coming to terms that life as we had all known it, had come to an end, and a big change was in store for our family. We decided to wait for an appointment with the heralded Dr. W, to see what he had to say about our son’s condition.

I quickly understood why Dr. W was so popular with his patients (and all of the medical staff). He was kind, down-to-Earth, patient to answer all of the questions and challenges that I was peppering him with, and he took a genuine interest in our son, outside of his epilepsy. It turns out that Dr. W had grown up in a farm town, and he took an interest in studying neurology because he had an uncle with epilepsy who chose never to get it treated. (This uncle would often ride around on large tractors, to the dismay of his family.)

Over the years, we have had many ups and downs with our son’s epilepsy. Epilepsy is tricky because it is treated with heavy-duty brain medication, with heavy-duty side effects, and these medications work differently, with each individual and they can stop working as one’s body changes. There is not a “one medication fits all” situation with epilepsy. There are always more questions than answers with any condition involving the brain. Currently, what is thankfully keeping ours son’s seizures at bay, are three different medications, taken two times a day. Some people with epilepsy can never keep their seizures at bay. We are lucky. This I know. I have never been more grateful for anything else in my life. It took us a long time, and a lot of scary moments with our son having many major seizures, to finally get to this combination that currently works for him. And all of the while, Dr W. did everything in his power to support us, but more importantly, to support our son, as we went through this long process of finding meds with the least side effects, that still stopped the seizures. Dr. W cared for our son throughout high school, throughout college, and throughout starting his sales career in his young adulthood. Dr. W has been a constant in our son’s sometimes otherwise unpredictable experiences.

My son was an easy patient. His mother was not. I was a totally desperate, semi-hysterical, pain-in-the-ass, many, many times. (I’m pretty sure that my son and Dr. W probably have some private jokes about his neurotic mother who thinks she knows everything due to her intimate relationship with Dr. Google, and do you know what? I effing love Dr. W for this fact. Dr. W always made our son feel nothing less than a totally normal, awesome guy with an unfortunate affliction which we were going to find a way to control. Usually Dr. W spent the appointments more focused on these sincere questions: “What did our son think about that game last night? Whose our son dating now? How’s school going? Who can I reach out to at the DMV, to let them know that it is now safe for you to drive?”)

When you are going through something tough in life, you are never alone. God sends angels. They are usually in human form. Dr. W will always be one of these “angels on Earth” for me, and for my family. Always. He took “bedside manner” to a down home, yet ethereal form.

So yesterday, with my voice cracking, I told my son that he should reach out to Dr. W for a recommendation of whom he should go to now, for treatment of his epilepsy. The time that we long knew was coming, has now come. Thank you Dr. W, for everything. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, from the bottom of the deepest wells of my heart. I am a grateful witness and recipient, to you living a well-purposed life.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

938. What is the most beautiful city in the world?

Who Loves Friday?

I love owls, don’t you? Owls are definitely one of my all-time favorites. We have a noisy one who lives nearby, and hearing “our owl” always makes me happy. Happy Friday!!! Happy Favorite Things Friday!!!

We arrived home from Belgium in the wee hours of Saturday morning. We were exhausted and ready for bed by late afternoon, but we kept trudging on with unpacking and reacclimating. Our youngest son has epilepsy, but it is thankfully usually controlled with his medications. He texts us every morning and every evening to let us know that he took his meds, as a safety measure to make sure that he is on top of taking them. Well, Saturday he had an all-day work event, playing volleyball on the beach, and then he fell asleep when he got home to his apartment with his phone ringer turned off. When we didn’t get his text Saturday evening, and then we couldn’t reach him (despite me calling him 100 times), I was hysterical (exacerbated by my own lack of sleep). Anyway, I won’t get into the fact that I embarrassed him greatly with a police wellness check (all three of our sons had a field day with that one) but all of that hoopla could have been averted with a tip that I just learned from my daughter. iPhone users:

“When you tap on edit, go to the individual’s ringtone and tap there. Scroll to the top of that page and there is a setting for Emergency Bypass. With that switch on, you will receive sounds from that caller even if the phone is on Mute or Do Not Disturb is on.”

This excellent emergency tip is my favorite for this Friday. I’m sorry, I don’t know if other cell phones offer this feature, but it is certainly something to look into for your own peace of mind.

Have a wonderful, safe and easy-going weekend!! See you tomorrow!!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

1849. Have you ever slipped on a banana peel?

There’s a Hole in the Bucket

Love is an action, but the feelings that you get from loving are incredible. Those feelings have to be love. So love must be a by-product of acting on love.

I’ve been wallowing in love-sickness these last few days. We took my youngest child and our only daughter to college on Friday (she opted to start this summer). Why is it that when you take a kid to college, everything that you do, and that you see, reminds you of them?!? Everything. I was in the grocery store yesterday, and on the clearance shelf they had a big bag of candy corn. I got a lump in my throat because my daughter is the only one in our family who actually likes candy corn. I almost publicly cried at our local grocery store over a huge, stale bag of candy corn.

My daughter seems very happy though. She’s meeting lots of people and I am so thankful for the technology of Facetime. Our youngest son is living with us this summer, while doing a summer internship. (His epilepsy has been well under control. Regular readers, thank you so much for your love and concern, and your prayers and good wishes. He is doing so much better than last fall. We all are doing so much better, and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your love and support.) My youngest son is one of our middle two sons, of our family of four children. He shared a bedroom with our second eldest son, his entire childhood. He has never had the experience of being an “only child” with his parents’ attention entirely focused on him. Never. There has always been at least one other child at home, every time that he has lived with his parents. I am not sure that our youngest son is enjoying this “only child” experience all that much. He seems to find a lot of reasons to work late, and to go to the gym for hours and hours. I’m hearing, “Don’t worry about me for dinner,” a lot. Interestingly, all four of our children are dating only children. I can’t decide whether this means that onlies are somehow attracted to big, loud, boisterous, chaotic families, or if my kids are just tired of sharing with others?! It’s probably a mix of both.

On Twitter this morning, the Wise Connector posted this:

I like this take on the “Bucket List”. As a 51-year-old woman, the “Bucket List” thing kind of stresses me. I start worrying about prioritizing, and questioning whether I am wasting too much time, and even the state of my health. “The Bucket List” makes me concentrate on my demise too much. Last night, a group of good friends and I went out to celebrate one of our friend’s birthday at a new restaurant in town. The company was great, but the restaurant sucked. This restaurant is not long for staying in business, we all agreed (interestingly this restaurant is in one of those “doomed” locations. Three restaurants have already failed at that same spot. This is a phenomenon I have noticed my entire life, wherever I have lived. Some locales just seem to be cursed in this world.) Still, I am thrilled that we went to this new place. I am always curious about new places, and new people, and new things. I am thrilled for the experience which we had last night. I love having my curiosity satisfied, and now that particular restaurant will be conveniently tossed into the orange bucket above, leaving more room in the other bucket, which we middle-agers are expected to obsess over.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Epilepsy Awareness Day

MY FAMILY ~ MY LIFE ~ MY LOVES: March 2013 | Epilepsy facts, Epilepsy awareness month, Epilepsy awareness quotes

My regular readers know that our youngest son has epilepsy. Last fall, we were working on finding a combination of medications that would keep his seizures at bay, and yet have fewer side effects. (Epilepsy medications have a great amount of side effects. They are essentially medications that affect the brain and many other major organs in the body.) From July until Thanksgiving of last year, my son was averaging having at least one major seizure a week. I cannot begin to explain how awful and scary and painful this experience was for our son, and for our family. Luckily, we found a combination of three medications that are currently working to keep our son seizure-free. Some people never find medications that work. Some people with epilepsy suffer several seizures a day. It is a terrifying condition. My mind has often gone to the Ukrainians who have epilepsy and other major medical conditions, who have no access to their medications. It is so wrong that this is happening to them, on so many levels. I cannot even begin to fathom what they are going through.

If you search “epilepsy” on my blog you can read more about our story. If you are so inclined, please give a donation to the Epilepsy Foundation. This organization is the leader in funding research for hopefully one day finding a cure for this deadly condition.

Thank you for your continued love and prayers and concern for my son and for our family.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

The Passing of Storms

Honestly, these past few weeks, I have been feeling really good. But one of my good friends from college is having one of those weeks in which everything that could go wrong, is going wrong. It’s at the point where I can tell that she’s almost embarrassed to tell us, her friends, what else has gone wrong, because it’s almost become unbelievable, to have that many things go wrong in a short span of just a few days. I texted her a mantra which I’ve used to get myself through my rough spots, my entire adult life, “Just hang on. One Day at a Time. The clouds always pass.”

As my regular readers know, last fall, I may have experienced the worst time of my life, to date. Our youngest son’s epileptic seizures were not being controlled by medication, and he was having major seizures, at least once a week (after experiencing many seizure free years). Our son had to come home from his university, and stay with us. Ask a 21-year-old man what it feels like to be “babysat” by his parents. Ask a 51-year-old woman what it feels like to fear for her child’s life on a daily basis. Both answers would be nothing short of “pure hell.”

However, as scared as the superstitious part of me is to write this, our clouds have passed on, from that dark period of this past fall. Our son’s new cocktail of medication has kept him seizure free for a couple of months now. He is back at his university. And I am starting to let myself exhale. I am also reflecting on how different I feel right now, in this moment, than how I felt back then. I clearly understand now, that I was pretty depressed last fall. I was just surviving to get to the next day. The contrast in my optimism, my energy levels, and my overall excitement for future goals and plans, from where I was this past fall, is night and day. I have gone through some harrowing, dark periods before in my lifetime, but going through last fall, desperately worrying about the well-being of my baby, was probably the darkest that I have ever felt, in my entire life. At the very least, it is the “freshest” dark period, in my mind’s eye.

Those of you who are suffering from depression, I want you to know that I empathize with you. It is such a draining, harrowing, soul injuring, exhausting, frustrating experience. And honestly, I was never diagnosed or medicated for depression, during this past fall’s upsetting events. So if it gets even darker than how I felt (such as a clinical depression), my heart bleeds for you. Know this: You are strong. You are brave. This is not your fault. You deserve better. Do whatever you need to do, to get help to feel better. And please know that “The clouds always pass”. I’m experiencing the blue skies right now, after the storm of my lifetime has passed. I am not so naïve to believe that I won’t have more storms roll through, but I have proven to myself, once again, that I have the faith and the fortitude to get to the other side of storms. And so do you. Believe it. Hang on. One Day at a Time. The storms always, always pass. They always do. And even through all of the destruction that the storms wreak, they do leave tiny, little unexpected lessons and gifts in their wake. If nothing else, the storms leave you with the gift of the realization that you are stronger than you ever believed yourself to be, and the joy in savoring the feelings of relief, and peace, and even some happiness, as you bask in your blue sky moments, with your face tilted towards the sunshine.

That Glow

Yesterday I experienced some of the lesser qualities that often come up during the holidays. These annoying little frustrations: cancelled orders, delayed orders, thinly-veiled passive aggressive guilt trips, twinkly lights half on/half off, things breaking out of nowhere when I am in a rush to go, long waits to get chores completed, and an email from the high school principal telling us parents to please not worry about a viral, national social media post, threatening bombs and guns at numerous, anonymous American high schools, across the nation. When these types of happenings occur as a one-off, you usually let them slide off your back as best you can, but in the middle of the holidays, when there is this underlying expectation to be so jolly and merry and bright, this string of annoyances made me start to behave like I belong on The Naughty List, in a big way.

While there are so many things that I love about the holidays, yesterday made me focus on what I like the least about the holidays, and that is the distraction of it all. It’s not like our everyday chores and obligations and routines go away, while we are busily and yet also thoughtfully, trying to do all of “the extras” that come with the show. Sometimes I even feel resentful. I just want my “normal” life back. During the holidays, it’s often easy to become irritable, and then flog yourself for being an irritable brat, during what is supposed to be “the most wonderful time of the year.”

That being said, yesterday I also noticed some of those most special gifts that tend to come around the holidays, the gifts that aren’t wrapped in a bow, and put under the tree. My two youngest children, celebrated being done with their finals, by going to see the Spiderman movie together last night. They both have been Marvel fans since they were little, and they made giddy plans, careful to not watch any spoilers, to go see a movie that they both ended up thinking was one of the best Spiderman movies they had ever seen. When they came home and excitedly regaled my husband and I, with the highlights of the show, my mind kept flashing back to two little children, brother and sister duo, watching Marvel cartoons and playing with action figures for hours. I think, at this moment, I might have started glowing like the Christmas tree.

One of our youngest son’s best friends from high school (and who also attends the same university), picked up our son for some golf yesterday, and he also told our son to keep himself free Monday night, because a few of my son’s buddies are wanting to take him out to a fancy steak house, to belatedly celebrate our son’s 21st birthday. This invitation came on the heels of the news that my son’s fraternity brothers did a fundraiser late this fall, and were proudly able to send a check for over $1000 to the Epilepsy Foundation, in my son’s honor. My son has had to remain home with us, for the majority of this semester, because his epileptic seizures have been uncontrolled, and as always, his wonderful friends have been so supportive and loving and kind. And witnessing all of this, reminded me of just how loving and supportive and kind all of our friends and our family have been to us, during this difficult chapter in my son’s epilepsy experience. And this is when I know that I started glowing, even brighter than our Christmas tree. And I didn’t feel distracted at all, at that moment. At that moment, watching my happy, contented children and reflecting on the love that we have been given from so many people, and the love that we have for so many people, despite my earlier frustrations, in this sometimes crazy, annoying, distracting, frenetic time of the year, all that I felt at that very moment, was peace. All that I felt was love. All that I felt was gratefulness. And these priceless, eternal presents, are the presents that are always here for the taking, when I take the time to notice them, and to soak them in. And that’s when I get that glow, that glow that starts from deep within my heart. I get that glow which you could never buy in a bottle. And I try to hold on to that glow, for as long as I can.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

If You Are Loved

“D.T. was a better person than he was a player, and he was a Hall of Fame player. That tells you how good of a person he was,” said Peyton Manning. “He treated my kids like they were his own. He was there for every teammate’s charity event.”

I was heartbroken to hear the news that Demaryius Thomas, a former professional football player, mostly known for his time with the Denver Broncos, passed yesterday at the age of 33. It is believed that Thomas died while having a seizure in the shower. This is a fear that any of us who love people with seizure disorders, deal with every single day. My son once had a seizure in the shower. I remember my husband ripping off the locked bathroom door that day, as if he were the Incredible Hulk. Any time anyone tragically dies of circumstances related to seizures, it is like a giant gut punch to me and to my family. It makes the gravity of my son’s epilepsy all the more real and visceral to me, but yet like a moth to a flame, I need to know more. I need to understand what happened in these various stories. I think that I am always trying to understand “the whys” and “the hows”, even though this is usually a lesson in futility. Usually “the whys” about anything that happens, often remain a mystery, and yet it is our human tendency to waste a lot of time on “the whys” about anything. The most repeated answer is usually nothing more than “just because.” Let it be. I have to remind myself, again and again, that I am not in control.

I spent a lot of time yesterday reading the stories about Demaryius Thomas. By all accounts he was a wonderful, stand-up man. When he was 11, Demaryius’ mother and grandmother were incarcerated for drug trafficking and they remained in jail for around twenty years. Demaryius was raised by his aunt and uncle. He became singularly focused on becoming an excellent football player and by many accounts, he ended up being one of the greatest receivers to play the game of football. In 2015, Demaryius wrote this wonderful blog post entitled “For Mama” for The Players’ Tribune. Here is an excerpt:

“No amount of money, no amount of fame, no amount of anything in the world can replace your mother. I realized that holding it all in wasn’t good for me, and I reached out to a preacher who really helped me talk through it all. People think orphans are kids whose parents have died, but 80 percent of orphans in the world have at least one parent who is alive somewhere. There are millions of kids just like me all across the U.S., and hundreds of millions all over the world.

We rely on the kindness and the couches of others to get us through the day. I had multiple high school coaches who looked out for me. Multiple college coaches. Deacons. Pastors. Aunties. Uncles. Friends. If even one of those people had let me slip, would you even know my name? Maybe not.

I talk to a lot of kids who have parents in prison, or who left them when they were young for one reason or another. I know the anger. The pain. The fear. Especially the loneliness. They just want somebody to say, “I care about you.” But that doesn’t happen enough, so they get into trouble.

As men, as athletes especially, we don’t like to talk about love. We talk about brotherhood and all that, but not love. But it’s the most important thing in a child’s life. More important than the kind of school you go to, or what neighborhood you live in, or even if you grow up around drugs and violence. If you are loved, you’ll make it out.“

“If you are loved, you’ll make it out.” This blog post struck me for its poignancy and its truth. I have been mentoring two young ladies for three years now. Neither young lady has her father in the picture. Neither of them are wealthy. One of their mothers is a cleaning lady, and the other one’s mother works as a cashier at Wal-Mart. Still, they are amazing, intelligent, talented young women and from the get-go, I would tell my husband and my family that I don’t worry too much about either of them, because it is obvious to me that they are loved. There is no doubt in my mind, that both young women are loved openly and fiercely by their mothers and by their families, and so, from the first time of meeting both of them, I knew that they would be okay. I am just so happy to add to their brimming pots of love, and I am so grateful that they add to my own pot, by loving me back.

If you are loved, you’ll make it out. It always comes down to love, doesn’t it? That’s the “why”. That’s “the how” about anything in life. Just love. Just be love. If you don’t feel like you are loved, then just start loving. It’ll come back to you tenfold. Giving love, automatically starts this miraculous boomerang phenomenon, so that when you give your love away, before you know it, you’ll get whacked in the head with more love than you know what to do with. Just don’t be stingy with your love. Don’t be conditional with your love. Just start loving. Love yourself. Love your life. Love Life. Love everything in your life, even the stuff that’s hard to love. Embody love, because underneath all of the stories, and all of the projections, and all of the insecurities, and all of the scramblings, and all of the puffery, all of the suffering, that’s all there really is to anything . . . Love. Who? Love. What? Love. Why? Love. Where? Love. How? Love. Just Love.

Rest in Peace, Demaryius Thomas. Rest in Love.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Monday – Funday

Do you remember the days of being your parents’ remote? I do. Sigh.

I’ve been pondering a lot about the process of elimination. I have been thinking about how progress usually has a lot of mishaps along the way. It’s rarely smooth sailing.

My youngest son has epilepsy. The way you find a medication that will work for epilepsy, is purely by a process of elimination. You start with one medication, and you keep going with it, until you seize, or the side effects become unbearable. Then, you move on to the next medicine, and you start all over again. I imagine it is the same for many disorders and diseases. It’s never a simple process. It can be daunting and frustrating and disappointing.

In that light, I started thinking about how judgmental we are about ourselves on our own journeys in life, and also how judgmental we can be about others, and even about the generations who came before us. However, the reality is, most of the answers which we learn about anything in life, never become crystal clear until we test them out, right? You learn not to touch a hot stove because you experienced being burnt once or twice. You learn from your experiences, far more than you learn from any lectures. Your experiences give you an extremely visceral memory, to help to keep you on track.

I recently watched Squid Game. It’s a brutal, but fascinating watch. (SPOILER ALERT) One of the games that the contestants play is crossing a bridge, made of glass tiles which all look the same to the naked, untrained eye. Half of the tiles are reinforced glass that can hold a person’s weight, and half of the tiles are made of glass that will shatter, causing the contestant to fall to his or her untimely death. The first contestant to cross the bridge, quickly does the math. There are 18 steps to be made, in order to cross the bridge safely and intact. The first contestant has a 1/262,144 chance of crossing the bridge safely. All of the other contestants who follow the first contestant, get better and better odds, as the game goes along. The later contestants have absolutely benefited from the mistakes made by those who came before them.

Do not crucify yourself for the mistakes you make in life. Learn from them, and try to help others to not make the same mistakes that you have made. This is the main reason why we study history. History has a tendency to repeat itself, until we finally learn the lessons and take a new path. Do not be too stubborn to not learn from your own mistakes. Do not be too proud to learn from others, and their experiences. Be open to learn the lessons of those who have gone before us. At the same time, try to be compassionate when others make mistakes, realizing that people are not always “doing life”, with the same starting odds. We all make mistakes.

Quotes about Learning from others mistakes (12 quotes)

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Not-So-Funday Monday

Yesterday morning, right after I published my blog, I took my dogs outside. My phone rang and I saw that it was our middle son calling. I knew what he was going to say before I even said “hello.” He and my youngest son had gone to a local park to play in a pick-up soccer game. My youngest son had an epileptic seizure on the field, in the middle of the game. I am grateful that my middle son was with my youngest son during this time. My middle son is a student in medical school and he, like the rest of our family, has witnessed many of his little brother’s seizures. In fact, my middle son witnessed my youngest son having his first major seizure, when my middle son was driving them both to their high school, many years ago. He attributes that experience as one of the major reasons why he decided to go into medicine. My middle son knows what to do when a seizure happens. He took good care of his brother, as always. The local EMT crew came. They know us by name now. They took good care of my son, as always. Luckily, since they were on the grass, and his brother was with him, my youngest son wasn’t greatly hurt, just some sore muscles and a scratched up face from some pebbles in the grass. He came home to recover from his seizure. He came home to my waiting arms.

My regular readers know that we have been going through hell this fall with my son’s epilepsy. His seizures are currently not being well-controlled by medicine. In September and October, my son suffered at least one major seizure a week, landing him in the hospital three times. He is currently taking five different anti-seizure medications, as doctors scour for a medication combo and a dosage, that works to keep the seizures controlled. We were cautiously optimistic that we had finally found that holy grail of medications, because this November, our son was almost one-month seizure free. Yesterday ended that streak.

I feel horrible today. I felt horrible yesterday. I feel deflated, dejected and scared out of my mind. But, honestly, I felt wonderful throughout our Thanksgiving break with our family. I felt pretty good the week before Thanksgiving break. I even felt pretty good the week before the week before Thanksgiving break. I sometimes cautioned myself that “I was setting myself up for a big fall,” with all of my hopeful optimism, but I didn’t care. It felt so good to feel good again.

During Thanksgiving break, our family, all six of us, had a great time together. We cooked, we shopped, we went to the movies, we even went boating. My youngest son went to the gym with his brothers, and golfing with his buddies who were home for Thanksgiving break. I won’t pretend that I didn’t have nervous moments. I won’t pretend that I stopped being hyper-aware of any strange noises in the house. I won’t pretend that I didn’t keep my son on a strict medication schedule. But I relaxed, I laughed, I savored. I had so much fun. I felt so much joy.

And today I feel so, so sad, but during the rest of November, I mostly felt ease and comfort and relief, because I let myself feel those better feelings. If I had stayed miserable and fearful and depressed and angry, all of November, yesterday’s seizure would have still happened. Despite what we erroneously believe, worry doesn’t stop any negative experiences from happening. Worry doesn’t help anything at all, and we all know this, but I got a very clear example of this fact, taught to me with this lucid life experience. I am thankful that I let myself enjoy a nice, and hopeful month, because I would have still felt so, so sad today, even if I had fretted and worried and been miserable for the whole month of November.

I say to you this: if you are in a budding new relationship that you are enjoying, savor it. Experience this relationship fully and excitedly, without fretting if and when it is going to end. If you have lost a lot of weight, be proud of yourself. Delight in your triumph. Don’t spend time worrying if you are going to gain all of the weight back. If things are going well in your job, with your family, with your friends, with your health, with your bank account, with your life, soak it all in. Enjoy the good! Facts are, upsetting, negative things happen in life sometimes. That’s just the way of life. No one is immune. Save feeling lousy for those times. Save it up, and rightfully feel miserable when you are in the middle of a rough patch. But don’t let those awful feelings seep into your good times. Let your bad times, make your good times feel that much more amazing and glorious and precious. You are strong enough to handle adversity, and wise enough to know that by feeling happiness in the good times, you are giving yourself something to look forward to, when you are in the middle of experiencing your hard times. Give yourself the gift of savoring life in the moment.

In the bad times choose to grow stronger In the good times choose to enjoy fully

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Monday-Funday

*******I feel like my regular readers/supporters/friends/prayer team deserve an update on what has been going on in my life, and yet the superstitious part of me is terribly afraid to do so. I am knocking on wood with my other hand and both of my feet, as I write this. My son (the one who has epilepsy) has managed to string along more seizure-free days than he has done, in a long while. My son is currently on five anti-seizure, heavy-duty brain medications, but we, (with his doctor’s instructions) are carefully weaning him off at least two of these medications. This autumn has easily been the worst, most painful, scariest experience of my life, and that of our family’s history. My son has experienced more major seizures in two months, than he has had, all together, in all of the years prior, since he was diagnosed with epilepsy in 2014. My son is home with us, we are “holing up”, keeping life simple, and pleasant, and in-the-moment. It feels good. We continue to take things one day at a time. We are cautiously optimistic. We (my family and I) feel your love, and your support, and your prayers and we appreciate them so much. I didn’t know if I could continue to blog throughout this period, and yet this blog turned out to be a saving grace for me, many days, while I was going through some real darkness. And you, my beloved readers, helped to pull me out of that dark place many times, just by being here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You are appreciated and loved, more than you know.

Surround yourself with positive people who will support you when... | Picture Quotes

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.