The Hidden Uniqueness of Those with Seizures
It seems I took my first breath of life at the age of nine, as 1970 was the unlucky year I was diagnosed as having petit mal epilepsy; all life before that stands out in my memory as nonexistent. I was forced to look through a child's innocent eyes at a very complex confused world filled with adult problems. I wasn't the least bit understanding and kept waiting to wake up from the nightmare I was the ghastly star of. So vividly I recall, when I gained consciousness, my first seizure which took place in a second-grade class with forty sets of curious inquisitive eyes gawking, and forty mouths hissing and laughing at the "jester" which was me. The dress I wore was one of my favorites, navy blue with brightly colored flowers, and was now soaked. There was a mysterious puddle surrounding my pitiful desk and it appeared as though to all I was a not-yet-housebroken youth! My instincts, distorted and muffled, shriveled my weak body down stiffly in my seat. I couldn't figure out what had happened and even if I probed the question to infinity it wouldn't have mattered as part of my memory and had been permanently erased.
Temporarily paralyzed, not even the ground under my feet seemed real or stable; I just sat quietly. The teacher helped me up and walked me to the school office; there I walked with my sweater wrapped around my waist to hide my soiled dress. At the sensitive and impressionable age I didn't want to return to school as what "friends" I thought I had betrayed me. Smiles turned to laughter, I responded to "hey stupid" and my soul mate was an intelligent, charismatic young girl named Cheryl Lightcap. We were vulnerable victims for others to target. I didn't see her blindness and she didn't laugh at my awkwardness although we were the school's strange mascots.
What a disgusting and terrifying thing these things called were too! As if from out of a corner a surge of extreme fear and panic struck me at will, no matter what I was doing! It wasn't uncommon to discover devilish, diabolical hallucinations seeming to glare back at me in a mirror during one of the blood-curdling episodes! Anything from blurred colors flashing in my eyes, ringing in my ears, and an controllable trembling were things I was learning to live with and expect.
Many occasions during one of these "attacks", I could have sworn that there were invisible eyes staring back at me inside the walls of the room I was in and arms protruding out of the furniture that tried to grab me! Like a bolt of lightening, these invaders would attack me. I was totally unaware and undeserving. Answers needed to be found and hospitals needed to entered to find them so that was destination number two.
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