3 weeks ago, I had two seizures and had to be flown to Harborview hospital (we just recently moved to Bainbridge Island and this is what happens when you live on an island and need emergency help). 3 weeks ago my brain decided to shut down and the only logical conclusion the ER docs came up with is that the antidepressant Wellburtin I was on was the culprit. I am now off of that drug and feeling the aftermath of withdrawl along with the ramping side effect of the anti-seizure medication.
They are not kidding about the heavy medication. While I am weaving through heavy fog and wondering where my mind is, my brain is communicating what and how it is doing. My brain is communicating that it is repairing itself. I’m navigating through dreams. While my waking self struggles with basic cognitive skills like counting from 1 to 10 and backwards again. Understanding basic concepts like alphabet order. Don’t get me wrong, I understand what I am writing and what people are saying but large concepts like memory and finding the correct words to speak is difficult if at most frustrating (thank goodness for Google search!).
At the most, it provides humor. The words are all inside my head but when they come out, it is not it. Language, speaking has taken me back to an earlier time in my life when my tongue was not my friend and I struggled with getting words to sound what I wanted.
I don’t have epilepsy. I have what you would call drug induced seizure. What I went through happens to 1/1000 people. I have what you would say a freak accident. I think at this point used up my frequent flyer milage at the emergency room? I don’t want to have a repeat of another seizure.
I now remember bits and pieces of Friday night. Floating faces and bright lights. The sensation that I am stuck inside my body and I don’t have any control of my mouth, my eyes and my body.
My brain is communicating with me. Usually my dreams are woven in puns and take a few days to dicpher. Now, they are very plain and loud and clear. It it trying to repair itself.
Dream 1. I am at the bottom of an apocolyptic city, the city walls have been torn down and I am looking up from below. I am tring to reach the top and can’t find the ladder to get up.
Dream 2. I am working for my boss (same boss as I am currently working for, sorry, lol) and I am an agent. My mission, he tells me is to go look for Lisa Choi. I accept and I chute down the wall rafters to begin. The walls are filled with dust and gooey glue, like expxy glue, except everything is runny.
Dream 3. I am sitting in a bedroom with my sister and we are playing with paper dolls. The ones where you attach paper clothes on. I am trying to attach clothes on to give the dolls their roles in society. I am currently stuck on concepts of order. In my mind, the order of things make everything right. Right from wrong. Left from right. I am currently struggling with what comes next. 10 to 11. 10 back to 9. k before l…I know that k comes before l but in what order?! I feel like a broken record stuck.
My husband tells me to relax and it will all come back. But my obssessive little brain is running through the scenary over and over again.
In that dream, I want to go to the living room and I start walking to the walls and trying to walk through it. The walls stretch like skin. I tear through the wall and the structure starts to crumble. I see sawdust and more of that expoxy running through the walls. I feel trapped and I’m trying to break free. I panic and back out of the wall. Then 2 construction workers walk through the door and tell me that they are working on something and to use the doors. I see the open doors behind them. Funny, I didn’t realize that there were doors.
Dream 4. I am part of a secret mission crew. We are driving an old blue Econo Van. Me and 3 other agents are driving on Hwy 99. The old viaduct 99 before they tore it down. I miss the exit and I end up at the Northgate exit. I know, I know, Northgate is nowhere near viaduct 99 but in my dream it is. I look over to the on ramp and my co-worker is now standing standing on the on ramp and she is singing to me. “There is no place like home. There is no place like home”. I am trying to find the exit back to home and I find myself driving and driving on the wrong side of the freeway. It has now occured to me that the arteries are Esher drawings, no end, no start. I am stuck, old blue Econo van driving around and around.
Dream 5. I am driving an one wheel biycle. Like those motoroized one wheel death machines that we see zipping around. I’m riding up the hill and I realize that I am lost. The streets start getting more tighter and the corners start becoming harder to steer. I can’t escape the turns.
Dream 6….
A girl and her Bike 