Having an 'Abby Normal' Brain...

This past week, I went to Costco on my lunch hour to have my computer glasses repaired. I sat down at the optical service counter. The optician assisting me was new and didn’t know how to repair rimless glasses, so my case was turned over to a more experienced technician. Two to three hours later, I “woke up” in Auburn Regional Hospital, having lost a chunk of time. I have no recollection of paramedic examination, being strapped in a gurney or an ambulance ride. Even the short emergency room visit is sketchy in review. Evidently, I had had a Grand Mal seizure for the second time this year. When I came back to full awareness, it was as if I never left. I hadn’t felt bad beforehand and felt nothing in the wake of this brainstorm, save a dull headache. In my embarrassment over my lack of control, much like the shame you would experience if others were to tell you how horribly you behaved while drunk, I returned to work the next day acting as if it were business as usual. Staff members not on board when I had my seizure at work last February approached me to check in and make sure that I was feeling better. I shut them down by changing the subject at hand. I was uninterested in further humiliation, however well intended. In a purely physical sense, Grand Mal seizures are much harder on witnesses and loved ones that they are on the person. While the patient just “goes away” for time, others must seek what could be life or death medical attention, witness the terrifying common denominator of life’s physicality and worry about the outcome. Immediately after the convulsions, a patient can be briefly psychotic or at the very least extremely confused. Will my loved one come back to me fully and consciously functioning? The emotional fallout on the family is immeasurable. The patient just awakens slowly as if from a very deep dream state. Like Lazarus, the patient walks out of their tomb of non-awareness unscathed to find others weeping over them. You can’t help but think of death after having had this experience.