Sunday, November 3, 2013

Childhood Memory, not in poetic form.

I floated above the entrance to the hospital and watched my dad drag me through the hospital doors and down the hall, crying and screaming for help. I could see my body shaking as the nurses rushed out to grab me and lift me into a bed. I watched them frantically push needles in my arms and start an IV. Then I woke up on the bed, saw my dad sobbing in the corner of the room, and knew I had almost died. 
That was my first seizure. Over the next few years I had them regularly. My dad started sleeping on the floor outside of my bedroom so that he could hear me gasping for air when a seizure started. He would run into the room, push me on my side, and hold me until the shaking stopped. Sometimes they didn't, and I'd wake up in the back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital. 
The doctors tried dozens of different pill combinations, sometimes mixing 15-20 different medications at once in at effort to get the seizures to stop. After numerous scans and tests it was determined that I only had them in the first stage of sleep and that it was a hereditary condition passed down from my grandmother, but nothing the doctors tried made them stop. 
At eighteen I was at a friends house and her brother was smoking a type of cigarette I had never seen before. Curious, I asked if I could try one. It was the first time I had ever seen or tried weed. 
I never had another seizure again. 

2 comments:

G Love said...

HA!

Phoenix said...

Yep. And why is it still illegal?
In the many books I've read about seizure disorders, marijuana is always mentioned as an effective cure. Always.