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The Outage
While the repercussions of the blackout that hit Ontario and the north-eastern United States two weeks ago seem to be fading away along with the rest of our summer memories for people who live with epilepsy and seizure disorders it has provided a new mode of understanding, a new metaphor to explain what it is like to live with seizures.
On Thursday August 14th the lights went out. Well, the lights and the air conditioning, and the elevators, and the subways and we were all left in the dark, powerless and unable to do anything about it. This is what happens when you have a seizure. The power goes out and there is nothing you can do. It's entirely out of your control and the power will come back on when it comes back on.
For the two weeks since the blackout most of us have been carefully conserving energy and waiting for all the power plants to come back online so that we could all get back to normal. But we're still wondering in the back of our heads when will it happen again. Some of us altered our behavior, preferring to take the stairs rather than risk getting caught in elevators, stocking up on batteries and water, buying a regular telephone so we can use it when our cordless ones don't work.
This is what happens when someone has a seizure. They may take minutes, hours or even days to fully recover. But it is still there in the back of their minds that dread, that fear that it will happen again, it is just a matter of time. So you take your medications, and maybe you change some of your regular habits. Maybe you don't go out as much, because you are worried that you might have another one, maybe you don't sleep as well because of stress and fear. And the longer you go without one the better you feel, but you never know if today will be the day that your power goes out again.
One of the biggest obstacles for a person with epilepsy is a lack of understanding on the part of the general public. Many people have grown up with a host of myths and misconceptions about epilepsy. But now there is a common language that can be used to try and explain what it is like to live with seizures. So, where were you when the lights went out?
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