Chris is in the Driver's Seat

I’m kayaking in a beautiful tropical setting. There are several other kayakers, some of them guides, and the weather is fine. The only concern is a huge whirlpool.

It’s 6:45 am. I have been up since 4:30 when I awoke feeling pretty good. Twice this morning I have felt a slight drift toward the whirlpool but I managed to avoid it.

I am feeling “clearer” than I have in ten days. I think hearing that the seizures are, in fact, seizures and seeing Dr. Shoja’s complete lack of concern was tremendously therapeutic. To expand the kayaking metaphor, the new medication is my life jacket.

Both therapists have independently told me to take the lead as a response to the increasing severity of my symptoms. I can do that. I have felt so overwhelmed by this crisis that I surrendered myself to them. But no more; I am henceforth their partner. I am rejecting the doctor/patient superior/inferior dynamic.

So I am taking a “time out.” From today until (and including) Monday, I am seeing no one. I may get out, I may not; I know that I can go out but I will take each day as it comes.

I have cancelled or moved all future appointments. My guideline — I don’t believe in hard and fast rules — is to only see one person a day and to have a day alone in between my dates with doctors or friends. And I am never going to have a physiotherapy appointment on the same day or a day proximate to a day when I see Dr. Shoja either.

And finally, on therapy days I am going to take my meds. It’s pretty clear that they are major triggers of seiizures. 

I am so going to get better. Like Ms. Rivers says, “It doesn’t get better, you get better.”

Nature and animals are my other medicines:

I passed this peony on my way to a physiotherapy appointment. 

Leon is, perhaps, my most powerful C-PTSD antidote.