I had my first seizure when I was around 13. We thought at the time that I had an odd reaction to heat exhaustion but years later, we would find it to be a warning.
The Gardasil vaccine is recommended for young women from middle school on. With every vaccine comes side effects, and not doing research beforehand as well as being in touch with your body can really backfire. The vaccine was an installment of three shots, separating up to six months.
My family was not good with the doctor and failed to follow up on things that we didn't find an impending threat. That year when I got my first HPV vaccine shot, we forgot about the other shots.
Later that year, I would have my first seizure.
It was hot as hell outside and I was a catcher for a travel softball team. I had been in gear all day and remember feeling fine but toward the afternoon something changed. I lost my sight and felt a striking pain throughout my body. The rest is like a dream, a series of images that seem random when put together; banana, baseball cap, women crying.
My freshman year of high school when I went to the doctor for a physical they mentioned that I never finished getting my Gardasil shot. Again, we went out to get me vaccinated upon suggestion by the doctor. No one knew what would happen. I went on to get all of the shots of the vaccine. At the end of all of my shots, toward the end of my first year, I had another.
It was the Sunday matinee showing of 1984 by the Tractor Shed Theatre at Saint Stephens high school. I worked tech in a corner with classmate Abigail and although our job was stressful, it was less so that Sunday, thanks to our experience. Right before a scene change, it started, and Abigail sat on my lap to try and hold me still.
During the scene change, she got me to our director where I fell to the ground in a seizure.
The pain is hard to describe. It took several people to hold me down and when the ambulance arrived I was strapped down onto a stretcher.
This would be the first of many seizures and tremors that I would experience to this day. I have many stories, a seizure diary if you will but this isn't about that.
Because of my seizures, I would then go to doctors and a neurologist but they were just as confused as we were. And they were expensive. We could barely afford a 30 minute EEG.
All they could tell us was "pseudo."
I held onto that word. It means fake, a sham.
My seizures were not real, but they felt very real to me. The doctors were not going to be able to give me answers, at least ones that I wanted to hear.
Instead, I got to know myself, my body, and everything it needs. I'm hyper-aware of my body's needs because I have to be. Low blood sugar will make me seize, change in temperature and a list of others that are just as annoying as they sound.
Seizures became part of me and still are, though in a much smaller way. I understand my body and I put it first and treated the issue the only way I knew how, aggressively and with a survivor attitude. This wasn't going to be the thing that stopped me. Seizures no longer control my life and they are not stronger than me.
Know your body. Know what you're putting into it, and keep in mind that any day it could all change.
