My Life with Functional Neurological Disorder: The N Word

It was dark and wet when I got up yesterday, but by the time came to meet our friends to walk our dogs, the sky was clear, and the sun was brilliant and bright. It was, however, a sobering 10°, but I loved being outdoors in sunshine regardless of the coolness of the air.

When we finished walking, we went directly into the village to do some shopping. Our wonderful Home and Garden store is closing soon, so I’m stalking up on things they carry and that I use because soon I’ll have to go to Nanaimo for things like light bulbs, paint, electrical repair stuff like switches and wire, and kitchen utensils.

When we got home, I fed the brood, had lunch and then took a nap. But once back on my feet, I did outdoor chores and some work on the car because it was such a. beauty of a day. It was a very welcome 16°. And when the outdoor chores were finished, it was time to knead the roti dough, to stretch it to paper thinness and then fold it up, twisting the dough as I roll it into a rosette shape.

Thankfully, the dough was co-operative. Now it enjoys another night in the fridge, and it will stay there all day tomorrow until I take it out to stretch again, this time to fry it in a little ghee. Once done, Her Highness and I went to Rollo Park to play fetch which, I hope, helps her burn lots of calories. My baby is a tad fat.

I almost ran into trouble. On my way to Rollo Park, the gas symbol came on, and I realized that I was almost completely out of gasoline, so we turned around and went back to Pinecone Park where I have gas in jerrycans. I put a good amount into the car, drove into the village to fill up, and then went to Rollo to play fetch in glorious sunshine and warm (enough) air.

My dieting has kind of gone out the window. Thanksgiving dinner and all the meals we had together, Dianne, Beverly and I, have destroyed my discipline. And now, another dinner. My fridge is full of turkey, stuffing, and tian, and after tonight there’ll be more leftovers. Sigh. But come Monday, I get serious again.

When we got home from Rollo, Sheba rested. She’s always beat after fetch. And I got changed and slipped into the warm wonderful water of my hot tub. I shall miss these relaxing soaks when the shit weather comes, and I empty the tub. And then my day was done. It was relaxing time, dinner and a movie time; it’s my favourite part of the day (except for walks).

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Beth wondered why I’m having difficulty accepting that I was a neglected child. I told her that I don’t know why, and I don’t. When I get into thinking about the past, I keep wanting to scream that I don’t want to be that ignored kid. I lived it; I know Dr. Shoja is right. All my life, I’ve known the Tyrells were distant. ‘Distant:” that’s a word I nearly always used.

I also told people that they had no interest in me. It’s the word, ‘neglected’ that I hate. It sounds so Dickensian. But I’ve always been protective of the Tyrell’s all my life. Even when I started with Dr. Shoja, I told her I didn’t want to hear discourteous words about them. Dr. S. told me right away that victims often are protective of their abusers.

And fuck. Those words killed me. She had told me that she would use her vocabulary as a doctor, as I could say whatever I wanted.

I’ve always loved writing. I loved it so much I took calligraphy, and I drew words and letters in my art class. And I can get picky about words. For example: I’m currently banishing ‘basically’ from my speech—and not because I stutter. I recently successfully banished the word ‘should’ from my speech.

When Dr. S. casually said, “As with all anxiety disorders…” I had sudden clarity about my condition. That word, ‘anxiety,’ made my C-PTSD and FND diagnoses comprehensible and a comfortable lay level.

And that ‘N’ in FND, that stands for ‘neurological.’ For the three years after my diagnosis, I understood myself to have a neurological condition. But one day, Dr. S. did it again, but this time she said: “Because you have a psycho-neurological condition …” and I had another epiphany. It explained my experience far more accurately, because emotions were triggering my seizures.

So, dear readers, both of you, I think I have a problem with that N-word for many reasons. BUT: I’ve consistently written here that accepting my diagnosis has been harder than accepting my seizures and speech issues.

I was only eighteen when I took my only psychology course at UBC. The thing that stuck in my brain from that course was a photograph (above). I honestly don’t think I had any conscious awareness of the relevance of the photo to my history, all memories of my past were locked away. It stuck because of my love of animals and because the experiment seemed cruel to me. I felt dreadfully for the poor little guy in the picture.

The photo is of a monkey in the experiments of Harry Harlow. His experiments were on rhesus monkeys deprived of mothers. The studies involved surrogate "mothers"—a wire one that provided milk and a soft cloth one that did not—which showed that monkeys overwhelmingly preferred the cloth mother for comfort, a phenomenon called "contact comfort". Other experiments involved isolating infants completely, which led to severe and often irreversible social and emotional disturbances, demonstrating the critical need for early social and maternal bonds.

Now, of course, I think at some level I may have made a connection to my past, perhaps even subconsciously. Beth wrote a very kind email, to express her confusion; her advice seemed, more than anything, ‘logical’ to me. I agreed with all she said, but logic seems foreign to questions about emotions. I see Dr. S. in a week. We’ll be talking about the N word.