Things that go bump in the day...

In April I wrote about the Water of Life because I have been drinking enough water to fill a reservoir. The oncologists and nurses said water will flush out the toxins and help with fatigue. So as each wave of fatigue crashed into my day I drank another glass,

But as spring opened its doors the bite of fatigue got sharper each day.  After my shower I had to lie on the bed. Downstairs for breakfast, I felt dizzy as I emptied cereal into my bowl…

I feel awful, keep falling over and I am having seizures again  I tell my neurosurgeon when I see him in March for my 7th annual brain scan results.  

Well there is no change in your scan he says and the ventricles are the normal size so no sign of hydrocephalus either.

But at home when I try to hurry to reach the ringing phone, my feet end up in a knot and  I launch myself across the room like a cannon ball. My head breaks the fall as it smashes into a table…I sit up with a groan as blood trickles down my face and onto my arm…

After a three hour wheelchair wait in Accident and Emergency It is too late to stitch my head wound so I am pushed to a ward. Too ill to go home. 






The cause of my fatigue, wobbling Weeble-ness and falls is Hyponatraemia - a dangerously low sodium level in my blood. The cause of this low sodium is a side effect of one of my epilepsy drugs Eslicarbazepine (also occurs with Carbamazepine).  

My epilepsy consultant explains…by drinking a lot of water you have been making the (until now unknown to me) side effect much worse. 

I have over diluted the small amount of sodium still in my blood.  I am intoxicated with water!!

So now I have to count my cups of coffee, camomile tea and glasses of water. A total of 1500mls per day is all I can have.

After a couple of days of  one legged foot stamping tantrums and rants...the rewards of less water flow in…my Weeble-ness is less wobbly. I am hitting the floor less often and my seizures have stopped again - for now. 

So on holiday I hide the scar under my growing fringe and allow myself an extra Banaberry crush mocktail ...

Musings of my epilepsy drugged brain

The changeover of epilepsy drugs to try and regain control of seizures is a sluggishly slow process; adding a new one into the pot before the old one is slowly withdrawn. At the start it is hard to see through the cloud of dumbed down brain activity. Writing a line for my blog was as tricky as getting my legs to run.  I have tried to capture that feeling in words...

Letters swirl in a kaleidoscope of colour,

Transform in their chrysalis cocoon

cups become cakes, cauliflowers are mushrooms

Clusters of words play hide and seek,

On the run from the trap of my pen

they meet just out of reach

,

Ideas turn to darkness as they slip into mist,

Print swirls in the midst of pale pages

as thoughts tussle without wings to fly

Like flittering butterflies sentences escape,

Paragraphs part to let them through

to soar in language laden skies

I lie in wait for a painted Lady to settle but

the pink and white mind blurring thieves make

my head close its eyes before she lands

Dawn October 2013

Picture I took in Hidcote Gardens

Killing Creativity - Epilepsy at work

My writing has missed the bus. Words, like the end of a rainbow are impossible to find.

I chase red orange yellow and green but they blur into blue indigo and violet.  A sentence is the undiscovered pot of gold.

Keyboard tapping causes nausea then cotton wool fireworks explode in my head before salty rain streaks down my face – another seizure.

I call out to Mr H,

What’s the word for a group of sentences?

Paragraph

I slap my forehead.

I write to keep my grey matter alight, but at the moment the brightness has turned to mist where words get lost or alter their shape as they emerge. Cups are cakes, shoes become slippers, knives are kettles and sentences are a jigsaw with missing pieces.  A thought in the kitchen slips away before I reach the next room.

As I walk in search of a cluster of words, sentences part to let me through. I hunt for a paragraph until the sun disappears. I sleep under a window and dream of floating pages trapped in my minds web.

Morning and evening I gulp down the extra pink and white mind blurring thieves.  Hopefully once the changeover is complete the rainbow's end will be mine.

A Caribbean Rainbow I captured in 2012

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Creative-Writing, Epilepsy