Sick of Being Tired; Tired of Being Cyclic

Today marks the one year anniversary of my wife's first seizure. I haven't really spent any time thinking about it, but anniversaries have a way of resurfacing memories:

We had been married 2 months and 3 weeks. I had found something I wanted on Craigslist and the seller worked in the Finger Lakes area. Strangely, the seller turned out to be a sound engineering professor at FLCC and had been one of a handful of people who had reviewed my resume that I had submitted for a job a few months prior. He was going to be in the Rochester area, so we agreed to meet up at a gas station there.

Cherisse and I had not been out together in a while, so we decided to make an evening out of it. We would go together and after the transaction we would find someplace nearby to have dinner. She met me at my work when I got out and we rode there in my car.

The seller was extremely friendly; he had even discussed with me my resume, and offered me a tour of the FLCC campus. I remember having a great feeling at this point of the night- I had just bought an Orange 1x12 for cheap and was told 'I should definitely apply if I saw another opening' with body language that did all but wink at me.

There was a Cracker Barrel just around the corner from where we were, so Cherisse and I went there. We were standing in line to be seated when Cherisse excused herself to powder her nose.

That was the end of convention. The last time our lives would like yours.

I stood in line next to be seated. A grumpy old man behind me criticized me openly for not standing close enough to the hostess station. I was a gaping 4 feet away from it. I wanted to lash back at him, but my threshold for tolerance was much larger back then.

I was sat and looked over the menu as I waited for Cherisse. She eventually found the table, but was walking a noticeable amount slower than usual. She sat down and had a face that looked frightened. Her eyes were open wide- barely blinking. Her mouth was slightly held open like she was prepared to scream at any moment. She scanned the room with slow, fluid movements as though she was submerged in water.

"Are you ok?!" I asked. 15 seconds went by. She made eye contact with me, but no response. 20 seconds. 21 seconds. 22 seconds. 22 and one half... each tick of the the clock felt like a door being slammed in the distance- each time more slowly- each time deeper in pitch.

30 seconds brought on a laborious and weak "uhh, um. y---es".

More questions- more soft answers with 30 second delays. Eventually, we figured out she hadn't eaten much that day. Perhaps it's low blood sugar? I ordered for both of us- she could barely hold her fork. We drove home, but this was still going on. It had been well over an hour. We decided to go to [one of the many terrible hospitals in WNY]. After a few hours of waiting, we were finally seen by a nurse practitioner who told us Cherisse had mostly likely had a certain kind of migraine (really??). I want so badly for that to have been true.

Most of you know the rest of the story (in chronological order): more episodes like this, medicine, testing, brain tumor, more medicine, tonic colonic seizures, brain surgery, more medicine, "recovery", new seizures, more testing, more medicine, even newer seizures, good doctor moves, long string of incompetent doctors, yet more medicine, different testing, new medicine, more different seizures, finally another good doctor, even more testing.

I cannot divulge too much information, simply because we don't know much yet, but we are basically back to where we were a year ago. I love my wife so much. If she was going to go through this regardless of her situation, then I feel honored to have the privilege of being her support. I do hope, for her sake, that this NOT cyclical. I do hope this year brings some answers.

Once this is all taken care of, I'm going to take that guy up on his tour of the FLCC campus.