The Return To Innocence

Seizure happened in the kitchen. Jupiter meowed and rubbed against me while I crouched. Adam came in and gently lay me on the floor. My eyes were open and blank. Adam touched my face and reached for my mind, and I spasmed and gasped and blinked. I asked why I was on the floor. Adam helped me up and stood me against the large freezer. My memory is swirling. Alicia is holding me. Earlier, Adam said he told his boss, a fellow animal lover, that he needed an extra day to care for his wife. I rolled my eyes and said that was not necessary; that I was fine. Never mind. It was so dark and so white equally braided as order and chaos magics. I was spinning at ninety-nine percent light speed and thirty-five miles an hour. The world was elsewhere. A few seconds lasted a thousand years. Adam suggested I go upstairs and rest. Jupiter is suggesting a cuddle. I am thinking coffee and clonazepam and baclofen. I am made of light and love and pure order-chaos magic in its simplest form. I can give myself the right strength. May be that I can regenerate. As brightly and intensely as a Time Lord. I always shine enough for everyone.

If you are with me in person, and I suddenly yell out and fall to my hands and knees and scream, do not be alarmed. Gently help me stand and help me to a soft place to recline. I may be unable to speak properly, and I may be unable to remember certain things. I may lick or bite my lips, I may scratch myself or pull my hair or vocalize oddly. Take me in your arms and say comforting words. If I start crying, let me cry. Tell me everything is all right. Kiss me gently on the forehead. Offer me tepid water, or coconut water, or juice, or tea. I will need to be hydrated. If I get up and start stumbling around, take my hand and follow me. If I head toward a bathroom, help me in; I will most likely be able to take care of things on my own, as it will be a very automatic process. When I am done, lead me back to the couch, chair, bed, etc. Continue to hold me or hold my hand. I may be very dysphasic and emotional. I may also be very empathic, so do your best to stay calm, with a good bedside manner. Offer me foods like fruits, crunchy bacon, pastries, dairy, vegetables, protein. No bread; I might choke.
If I start speaking oddly in a very intense manner, it may be due to one of my spirit guides helping me speak. Serena, Amara, or Amber, since Alicia can't speak outside the rabbit hole, looking glass, and Wonderland forest that directly affects my epilepsy. Serena helps me through chronic pain and fatigue. Amara helps me through any psychological distress such as anxiety, depression, and fear. Amber monitors my entire consciousness and soul. There are reasons they are named their names. These guides are fictional characters I created long ago, characters who took on their own "personalities" to become a sort of overall coping mechanism. While Serena and Alicia remain deep inside my psyche, Amara or Amber may speak through me and alongside me to work my mouth and voice if needed. You see, Amara and Amber have been with me in various forms since I was born; my brain created them in my intense creative imagination as purely fictional ways of coping with my life. Serena and Alicia came later, as ways to continue fueling that creativity. These girls are not real, but they are certainly helpful.
After I am affected by a seizure, I may also be affected by various complexities from spastic ataxic cerebral palsy: fibromyalgia, sensory processing disorder, synesthesia, hypersensitivity, ADHD Inattentive and Over-Focused Types, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, hypertonia, hemiparesis, hemiplegia, severe anxiety or even actual panic, problems speaking and moving, drooling and possible gasps, choking sounds, or odd vocalizations, memory disintegration, spasms, emotional outbursts. Try to not be surprised. This is technically normal for me. You can ask me questions and I may reply one way or another
Complex partial seizures via temporal lobe epilepsy are different for most epileptics. For me, having cerebral palsy, these seizures can be extremely fascinating and bizarre.
I will add that this all happened approximately an hour before I wrote this, and the main reason I was able to type this out was because Amber and Serena helped. My body and mind are both in an altered state. Reality is swimming right now. I just banged my arm against the wall, and the only reason I felt it was because of that part of my brain that is still processing the outside world.
Yes, please ask me questions of all kinds. Nothing is off limits. Speaking out helps me understand my own brain and my own intense neurology.


***
Edited to add:
I just got a really fascinating comment on Facebook since I copied this whole post there. I'm going to post the person's comment and then my comment. I'm still not sure what to think. Was I too harsh in my reply? Also, I still don't know what sort of point they were trying to get across:
( Read more... )

So, until I see a full end to these violent migraines, brain pains, and flares of fibromyalgia, sciatica, chondromalacia patella, knee arthritis, ulnar nerve entrapment, hypertonia spasticity with hemiparesis, hemiparetic ghost sensations, itching, shaking, hay fever, exhaustion, true muscle weakness, and hypersensitivity... I will be pretending like all hell to be a normal ordinary human. Nothing to see here, nope, move along...

What with husband working a computer trade show job in Manhattan for the next couple of days, my sweet Charlotte will be coming over every day to help me work on organizing the rest of the house. Gods know I will need such help.

Also, I have a plush red fox and a plush gray wolf to cuddle, and my darling Serenity the Pony to whisper to, kiss on the lotus bud blaze mark on her forehead, brush her long long hair with a boar brush and wood comb.

And naturally, there is my wonderful balance of pharmaceutical pills and supplement pills.
Klonopin, Codeine, Ultram, Soma. Ashwagandha, MSM, Yerba Mate, Devil's Claw, Raspberry Ketones, Mangosteen, Moringa, Goji.

You know those migraines that last several days and are low-level enough that you can do things but are still horrendous enough that you can barely brain due to pain?
This is compounded by more hemiparesis, more fibromyalgia flaring, more knee pain (both chondromalacia and notarthritisdamnit in the right knee), TMJ, neck tension, and hypertonia in my left hand. Cerebral palsy and its complexities = buckets of fun.
The cats are less stressed than I am. I don't even know why I am stressed. There is no point. I'm not the one moving the house around. I'm not the one repairing and replacing the kitchen. I'm getting exactly what I want with the kitchen/hallway floor, cabinets, stove, dishwasher, etc. Next week is going to be like camping out upstairs and using the living room as a mini kitchen until the handymen are ready to replace the carpet. I keep telling myself it will all be fun and awesome. My amygdala is yelling, "You are a cat! You don't like change! You get anxious when stuff gets moved around, because your neutral chaos is suddenly not where it was and you can't find anything!" and the amygdala has a very good point.
Meditative exercises are in order, and clonazepam, and such.
People on Facebook are still irritating me with the whole "Big Pharma is EVIL and all pharmaceuticals are POISON and also the greatest cure is medical cannabis!" I mean, I can't wait until Maryland allows for medical cannabis to be a Thing, so I can become a patient. However, I am not going to bash traditional Western medicine like that. Lives have been saved. Fuck you, ultra hippie holistic pushers. I wouldn't be alive to listen to your ranting if traditional Big Pharma hadn't been around the NICU in 1979. I'm all about holistic medicine balancing out pharmaceutical medicine. But there is only so much I can take from extremists on either side.
Funny, because one of my favorite current quotes - found on Facebook - is "The is a huge amount of freedom that comes to you when you take nothing personally." Unfortunately, since we are humans, this is easier said than done. I'm not a robot. I'm also an empath. When I feel insulted and slighted, I do feel the need to at least correct the person. You know, like when someone tells me I am filling my body with Evil Big Pharma's poison, when that poison is the best thing keeping me from falling into a seizure-induced coma or death; or the best thing keeping me from self harm from deep depressions; or the best thing keeping me from endlessly screaming wildly in constant violent crippling agony that I cannot describe. Supplements and therapies can do a great deal, but they cannot do what Evil Big Pharma drugs do for me. So, yeah. I don't mind being in the clutches of Evil if it helps me live my life well.
I try to not take things personally. It does free me from stress. It is easy to smile, nod, and brush off insults like nothing. Sometimes. But, look, we all have those days when everything is piling on us, our moods are dark and growling, we want to bite everyone who looks at us wrong. I don't care if you're a bodhisattva - human emotion runs wild. And that means that if someone keeps trying to push me, I will eventually keep throwing them off a cliff until they get the point.

Also, we went to the Ranger Surplus in Bethesda. After a long conversation with an employee about cerebral palsy, I wound up with a pair of Army boots that should help stabilize me well enough. And now the employee knows to suggest such boots to people with certain disabilities. I feel as if I made a friend and helped some sort of cause.
Rothco Jungle Boots. Oh damn, these are comfortable. Thank you husband, and thank you awesome employee at Ranger Surplus Bethesda who got into a whole fantastic conversation with me about cerebral palsy and good shoes. (Size 4 men's, which would be a size 6 women's for me. Yup. Awesome.)
A pair of Doc Martens Boots and a pair of Rothco Jungle Boots. Fitted with strong, comfy insoles. Oh, I have never been so excited about lace up military style boots. It is also a great and good challenge for my fine motor coordination issues.

And: Today has been a busy and awesome day so far. Brunch to celebrate my best friend's birthday, with nearly two dozen dear friends I haven't seen in months and years. I drank half a beer, even. It tasted like chocolate and caramel. The pills, including Soma and Klonopin, have helped me be in much less pain and much more social. My friends are amazing. I must socialize more often, truly.

Energy flowing between two people can be so extraordinary that it can energize in fascinating ways. So thank you, Jess, for helping me stay steady and stable in the midst of my own chaos. I hope the charoite pendant I gave you is helping you in as many ways as possible, even charged with my own humming wild fluid chaotic energy. We must absolutely get together again and talk about it all.
I've decided to wear pendants of lepidolite and chaorite together, along with the three lepidolite bracelets and the three charoite rings. They do calm and energize me in fantastically intense ways that I want to explore completely.

Research time, extremely. I must figure out if these bodywide spasms and twitches are due to cerebral palsy hypertonic spasticity, muscle fatigue from either or both cerebral palsy and or fibromyalgia, seizure auras primarily displaying motor and autonomic simple partial seizures, physical coldness, or plain exhaustion. I would consider all of the above, since cerebral palsy and epilepsy love to dance together like whirling dervishes.

I am very drained and tired, but I am still filled with social energy from the parties. I didn't realize that was a thing. My aura things are still buzzing and humming. This is fascinating. I need to analyze it. I had no idea I could be exhausted and still energized in such a specific psychic way.
I guess I must again thank Jess for her calming energy. My energy is always rushing, moving, streaming, even when I am fully tranquil. Something inside me is always moving faster and more intensely than I ever could, and I can rarely catch up with it. I still don't understand what it is.

Dude, magnolia bark makes for awesome sleep, but also for the most insane, bizarre, wild dreams ever. I even remember parts. I can't even begin to describe last night's biggest dream. I barely understood it while I was dreaming and I certainly cannot understand it while awake. After waking up, for about twenty minutes I had absolutely no proprioception and I wondered if I was still dreaming. That was not the fault of the 400 mg of magnolia, though, that was just cerebral palsy insanity. Damn brain damage.

Dear dreams: Please continue to be awesome, but try to tone it down just a little. Maybe some less creepy and grotesque imagery.

I am more coherent. I'm going to take a nap. I will watch the repeat Doctor Who Christmas episode at midnight. I am so tired and in so much pain. Of course. Seizures paired with attacks of fibromyalgia and hypertonia via cerebral palsy are naturally never fun or interesting except on a neuroscientific basis.

This sums up too many things for me. It shatters and heals my heart.
Thank you, Shinga.
http://shinga.deviantart.com/art/Into-Dust-326278238

The body sings in harmony with the brain since the beginning. And when the connections are shattered and the harmony is broken, the only thing left to do is write a new song, even if it takes until the end.

*I cannot sing. I cannot dance. But I can write. I can speak. I can dream. And I can fight.*


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ4RMyI90_o

I don't want to describe the pain today. I don't want to describe the seizures this morning. I cannot stop thinking about the dreams when I slept, the insomnia until four in the morning, the anxiety attack upon waking, the desperation to feel happy, the lack of appetite, the desire to feel comfort.

The best things about today:
All three cats surrounding me on the bed.
All three cats following me down to the living room, with Luna trilling, mewling, chirping, barking, begging for hugs.
Still being able to smile and be amused by Futurama and My Little Pony Friendship, which I think have been saving parts of my sanity.
My amazing husband calling from Las Vegas to tell me that he will be home a day early - tomorrow morning, in fact.

And so, I drink my superfruit smoothie, swallow my medications, perform my meditative magics, and try to mend my cracked rhythm for another day.

Oh, son of Ammit who devours the dead under the Scales of Justice in the Hall of Two Truths in the house of Osiris. I was absolutely not expecting such a ferocious migraine to burst into the fibromyalgia flare, take over the party, get the cerebral palsy hypertonia drunk, and sit back and wait for some random symptom to explode all over the place until my neuromuscular system and musculoskeletal system get scorched. I would maybe curse Anubis and Osiris under my breath, but hell no, I can't.
All I can do is treat it as best I can and wait for it to pass. And hope that nothing gets too insane, because screaming and sobbing makes my throat hurt.
Besides, I am already backing away and crawling toward the Greek pantheon, because oh my various gods and galaxies, I need to feel better soon or the screaming may happen. I am about to cry out for Apollo, Artemis, Asclepius, Aceso, Aegle, and the Moirai themselves, because this is hard to breathe through.

...anyway, I'm going to take some heavy medical drugs and curl up now with my penguin and dolphin Pillow Pets. And my three cats.

Also, I need to copy this Facebook comment that I wrote, because it explains a lot about my brain, and I need to remember:

*Well, Mom was atheist while Dad was agnostic until he started leaning more atheist. They actually did "celebrate" Christmas and Hannukah, mainly because their friends did, and they wanted to raise me with overall world religion knowledge. I grew up believing that the Abrahamic god was just like the Greek gods, Egyptian gods, etc. Fallible, human-like, silly, weird, touchable in ways, in no way above and beyond human comprehension.
In fact, in elementary school, a classmate asked me what religion I was, and I said "Um, American?" because I honestly didn't understand. When I came home, mom gave me a giant book on World Mythology and told me that I could figure out what I wanted to try. She then sat me down and explained all about Judaism, Christianity, Islam, polytheism, and other things like that. She told me that if I ever did choose a religion, that I should stay open-minded no matter what. Being six at the time, I said, "Well, I really like the Greek gods, but I think I wanna be agnostic. Is that okay?"
Then later, as a pre-teen and then teenager, I started having dreams featuring humanoid beings who identified themselves as various gods from the pantheons from Greece and Egypt. Given that my father's family was all Italian and Greek, that made sense, and my mother could trace her family history all the way to the Jews in Egypt, something like that. I did take the dreams seriously, because they really were that weird, but I figured that the so-called "gods" were interdimensional or cosmic entities. (I was always really big on science fiction and fantasy.)
So when I started college, I decided that eclectic paganism was the path for me, since it was a very personal kind of faith/belief. My mom is still skeptical of many things although she will admit to paranormal and supernatural stuff, and my father was accepted into the Freemasons (as his lodge's only stonemason) and just says he believes in an overall "God-like source" even though he's probably more of a pantheist. Me, I'm a polytheist polyagnostic pantheist eclectic pagan with a greco-roman concentration. But it was my childhood atheism that helped me figure things out. I'm grateful for it, because it helped show me how to see people and faith from a very specific perspective.
I've always said that if someone proved to me that one god/religion or another was completely true or completely false, I would shrug, say, "Okay" and go back to my business. I think Terry Pratchett said it best when Granny Weatherwax encountered Herne in the forest: Yes, I see you. Just because you exist does not mean I have to believe in you.
I also try to quote Sam's huge monologue from Neil Gaiman's "American Gods." I can believe in a LOT of things.*

A hot shower helped a little bit. Rubbing healing salve into my joints and muscles helped a little bit. I am typing with one finger on my right hand, assisted lethargically by one finger on my left hand. Said left hand is currently spastic and hemiparetic and burning and stupid. Also my left leg and the left side of my face is doing the same thing. I am used to that, but I wish I were not.
I will be going to bed soon. I wish things would stop hurting. My head is still spinning.

Somebody make me laugh, please? Jokes, cute pictures, funny stories, weird or crazy stories, whatever. I may not see comments until tomorrow, but it would be lovely to laugh.

I like things that make me laugh. No matter how much I hurt, I want to laugh.
Oh, fuck, this really hurts. Somebody help me joke about it.

Damn you, migraine. Damn you, muscle burning. Damn you, sciatica. Damn you, hemiparetic tremors. Now I can barely watch cartoons, let alone meet that word count I wanted. I think I will just throw treatments and meditative exercises at you until they stick hard enough to make one or all of you retreat whimpering in tears like that red dragon under the stare of Fluttershy.

Well, at least I don't have Tritonian Hypermalaria or Yetiism. Also, I am not on fire. Bonus!

Dear skin: I don't know what I did to make you so itchy. I didn't eat too much soy, nor did I eat pure soy, nor did I eat kiwi fruit. And I don't have any other food sensitivities. I did not come into contact with anything that might cause contact dermatitis, not that I know of. So it is tamanu oil and other anti-badstuff oils for you.

http://www.skinactives.com/EMUlator-Oil.html
https://store.abbeystclare.com/skin-care/rice-olives-deep-cleansing-serum-and-skin-care-serum-amazing-skin-treatment-melts-away-eye-makeup.html
http://www.energeticnutrition.com/life-flo/msm_glucosamine_cream.html
http://sweetsationtherapy.com/item_290/LumiEssence-Organic-Advanced-Brightening-Repair-Treatment-with-Kojic-Acid-Arbutin-Vitamin-C-2oz.htm
http://goldenearth.net/shop/category/body-moisturizers/
http://www.zatiknatural.com/product_info.php?cPath=77&products_id=160
http://theskinrevolution.com/_revitalize.html
http://www.secondnatureskin.com/products/womens-skin-care/coco-mojo-facial-lotion/

This question was recently asked of me:
"I know you are hypersensitive, but what are the worst culprits for you? Like, music, smells, noises, lights, etc."

Loud, thumping, deep-bass music is the worst. The kind played in nightclubs at screaming volumes. The kind that you feel so deep in your gut that it hurts. It can trigger migraines and seizures for me and generally grates against my brain. But whenever I ask that it be turned down, and then get snapped at because the person likes his or her music so loud, I back off. I feel like I have no right to ask. I feel like a freak and a whiner. Sometimes I'd rather let myself hurt. I don't want to try and explain how much it physically and neurologically hurts me because I am tired of sounding like I make excuses for myself. I hate asking people to turn music down for me, but at the same time I cannot understand why the hell people need their music so loud. It's been proven to be rather detrimental to aural health, anyway. I actually love that type of music myself -- just at lower volumes.
Seriously, why must that music be so, so deafeningly loud?
Then, there is chemical scent. Perfumes, colognes, aftershaves, deodorants, household cleaners. I'm usually fine, unless those smells are intense, like when someone puts on too much cologne or uses too much chemical cleaner. I don't wear perfume all the time anymore. I have a bottle of Inis Arose and a bottle of Givenchy Very Irresistible. I’ll spritz them on very lightly and I’ll be just fine. The only fragrances I wear regularly now come from my Psyche Lotion and Shea Latte Body Butter from Vicki's store, because she makes the scents very light.

And now I feel as if I complain way too much. I apologize and I truly cannot help it if I’m super sensitive. But that’s how some people are. I just learn to live with it, really. Although I kind of wish people are a little nicer when they roll their eyes and grumble, "You're too sensitive, get over it."