Hail Seizure

My mom has to go back to the neurologist’s office for the second time in two weeks. Dr. Groothius has the EEG results and they are not good.  It would appear that an almost constant state of seizure activity has been recorded.  “Shit!” says my mom.  I agree with her, this sucks.  This new information explains why she hasn’t made any significant sort of recovery in the last two weeks since the seizures started.

Taking care of a sick parent is a bad deal for everyone involved.  If you’ve ever wondered what your mom or dad was like as a three year old, just send a surge of electrical current to their temporal lobe.  While it won’t make them as cute as a fucking button, it will reduce their ability to care for themselves to next to zero and require around the clock attendance.

The basic problem is that the temporal lobe of the brain (home of short term memory) has been fried by the numerous seizures.  Literally, currents of electricity have been attacking my mom’s brain for almost two weeks solid.  This is with one of the more dependable anti-seizure medications, Depakote, on board. 

Here are some the ways the mind is affected by temporal lobe epilepsy:

1. short term memory loss

2. extreme anxiety

3. feeling displaced

4. inability to know what the day, the month or the year might be

5. whether or not her new grandchild has been born

6. complete exhaustion

7. vertigo

8. linear thought not at its best

The anxiety manifests in such a way that combined with the lack of recall will eventually drive the caretaker to the limit of their patience.  In an effort to tether herself to anything my mom makes list upon list which are dense, impenetrable and allows no light to escape.  It seems reasonable to try anything if nothing will work when you are trying to ground yourself.  Hence, the quandry:  How do you get a handle when your memory has been, for now, shredded?  She will ask a lot of questions, over and over.  Sometimes the same question is asked so often that it seems like a vicious joke, but, more often than not, it is a frustrating exercise in repetition for both of us.  Her inability to retain information causes her to ask questions in an urgent, rapid fire attack.  Repeated answers to the same question do not sink in; there is no “getting it.” 

The whole process is a desperate grasping for any fact or clue as to who she is, how she lives, and what the fuck is happening to her.  Even the fact that she is having temporal lobe seizures escapes her memory.  It seems very odd that she can’t remember what is happening to her but she really does need to be reminded.  Not just of this episode, but, also the one in September of 2005.   The look of sadness never fails to knock the wind out of me, like being punched in the chest by a bear.