Today I woke up.

At 8 A.M. today, I heard songbirds and opened my eyes.

And just like some fifty-thousand of the two hundred thousand in Henry County,

I rolled out of bed, pulled my pants over my legs.

I put on a button up flannel shirt, unbuttoned and seemingly thrown over my body.

No sooner than had I covered my legs and shoulders, I was looking for my morning medicine.

I found the bottle, and held the lid cracked to the bottl, so as to roll out one powdered pill.

It occurs to me , like it does daily, that the pill I'm ingesting is either my poison or antidote.

I closed the lid to the bottle, and closed the lids to my eyes.

My day begins eating some cereal, listening to the news.

The volume was loud, I turned it down.

If it's too loud, I lose focus and might miss warning signs, or not avoid a trigger.

After a while, I stand and carry my bowl to the kitchen,

and like every other lucky charms lover, I put the bowl in the sink and ran the water.

I turn around, take a step from the sink, and collapse, starched like glue.

First, my body constricts at the waist, causing me to lean forward and spasm left and right.

Without muscle control, I fall face first next to the garbage.

The floor and the smell were not remotely on my mind.

My arms draw up to my chest, almost magneticly.

They start jerking violently into my ribs and away from my body.

Alarms go off in my head, my chest is constricting, gasps for air shoot from my body.

A wave of anger, frustration, and panic-whipped despair crashes over me,

And I make guttural attempts to curse.

My fiancee finds me and is scared, I try to give her my eyes to comfort her.

My eyes defiantly roll back into my head.

Shame pools on my body, and I feel as though I can take no more.

Then it stops.

Like unplugging a vaccuum cleaner, deafening noise and whirring to--

Nothing.

As if though my brain were disconnected, and my eyes open,

I may only narrate the following through my fiancee's words.

I had a steady stream and pool of saliva coming from my mouth,

and had dull spasms, trickling down my arms and legs, up my neck sporadically.

Eight minutes from the fall, I am awake, though my ears are ringing loudly,

and I am too exhausted to think, speak, or move. I cry in shame.

Ten minutes from the fall, I gather loose details of the entirety,

I make a form of timeline based on memory and witnesses.

And I write it all down, to give to a neurologist, to be written yet another pill.

Yet enother hopeful antidote, plucked out of a sea of possibilities.

One pill, in a sea of surgeries and injections, prescriptions and therapies, will be the one.

Any other pill is poison, making the seizure disorder worse.

Any surgery taken will either cure or hamper recovery.

 

Two hundred thousand people a year get diagnosed with a seizure disorder.

In terms, that's the population of my suburban community, Henry County, Georgia

While medical advancements have been made, many are wildly expensive.

The therapies provided are largely experimental, or have abhorrent side effects.

I can no longer drive, as before diagnosing my seizure disorder,

I wrecked my car after seizing wihle driving on the highway.

Please, help me and others like my story.

Learn about epileptic syndromes, and proper first aid, research using google

With your help, one day epilepsy will no longer be a silent menace.

Only with our eyes open may we ever truly see epilepsy.

#WeSeeEpilepsy