On December 2, 2017, I took myself out to Black Bear Diner. It was a beautiful day for pancakes. If you haven’t yet, you’ve got to head down to order “The Griz.” It’s a delectable combination of sweet and savory with enough food to easily feed 2 people.
They start by giving you 2 ginormous pancakes, 3 eggs cooked to your hearts desire, bacon, ham, AND sausage!! If those aren’t enough to satisfy your pallet, they also give you a hearty serving of hash browns. My favorite part about this meal is, the cost won’t break the bank.
Knowing I wasn’t going to eat it all, I nicely packaged up half of my food, and ended up giving the box to a homeless man who was wandering around the parking lot munching on a box of Good & Plenty’s.
After I gave the rest of my food to him he said that he hadn’t eaten all day. So I gave him my water bottle as well.
This was a monumental day because my form of transportation back then was by way of the city bus. The reason for this was due to my license being taken away after I was deemed epileptic. I have since been on a seizure medication called Keppra that has kept my seizures at bay.
My seizures aren’t the obvious, convulsive, grand mal type of seizure. For me, I experience the room spinning counter-clockwise and I am coherent the entire time. After my seizure stops, my speech is very deliberate, I’m very tired, and my motor function is lacking precision. I’ve learned the term for these types of seizures is non-convulsive seizures. Non-convulsive seizures after stroke occur in approximately 5% of the stroke population (Miyaji, Kawabata, Joki, et al., 2017). This means I was one of the few lucky ones who sometimes experiences a “glitch” in my brain waves.
Even though medical issues aren’t funny, I still find humor in my seizures. I still make fun of my disability, and through my educational career, I’ve had my fellow classmates cracking up because of my “stroke brain.”
Life is about experiences, growth, and connecting with our fellow humans. If one can’t laugh at their own personal experiences, then what are we all doing here?
Stroke or no stroke, reach out! You’ll never know who’s heart you may actually touch until you try.
Reference List
Miuaji, Y., Kawabata, Y., Joki, H., Seki, S., Mori, K., Kamide, T., Tamase, A., Shima, H., Nomura, M., Kitamura, Y., Tanaka, F. (2017, March 15). Late seizures after stroke in clinical practice: The prevalence of non-convulsive seizures. NCBI. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5410470/
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