Numbers

     Our daughter had a good run with her seizures for a while: seven months without a tonic clonic, seven weeks completely seizure free and then boom, two seizures, one of each in one day which then means a trip to the hospital in an ambulance and then some blood work and monitoring. We try to make sense of this major change in things but we can't; we can blame stress, fatigue, whatever we want but what does then make sense is a change in medications. Starting over is very hard for our daughter who is waiting to be seizure free: waiting to drive, waiting to be free of headaches, waiting to be more independent, waiting to be like other seventeen year olds, waiting, waiting, waiting.....
     Here are some of the numbers: eighty seizures in her lifetime, sixty-five of them since high school started, twenty of them complex partial, so sixty of them tonic clonic, a dozen trips to the hospital, dozens more tests of every description, fifteen pills a day and one in every hundred people in the world is dealing with a similar situation, maybe better, probably much worse.        
     Some days it feels huge for our daughter and overwhelming for us but most days is just is. We are blessed with terrific care from British Columbia Children's Hospital. We are living in a time when huge strides are being made in epilepsy research, awareness, and education. We live in a country which looks after our medical needs and therefore lessens the load substantially. And every day, there is one sweet girl living her life with epilepsy--- our girl.