BUT FIRST, YOU HAVE TO ACKOWLEDGE IT TO YOURSELF
Trauma is just so personal and actually no one does get it.....because they haven't been subjected to this same trauma. I've been thinking about the desperation and absolute nothingness of that time last August. Without any thought I would have done whatever was at hand to end the pain....with no thought at all. So thankful there were no options available or that came to mind. I will do everything I can to never feel those things ever again. And other thoughts go to answer to prayers. Me, here in this moment, is an answer I never even thought about. I was so naïve at 23, newly married and thinking I knew what Epilepsy was all about.
Ronnie only had petite mal seizures not grand mal ones. Ken had both.......and the petite mal he had were nothing like Ronnie's, nothing. So naïve and being the "figure it out on your own mentality" and newly married the irrational fears morphed into solid phobias. How stupid! I'm not sure there was anything I could have done differently. Ken was out of control when we married in June and the seizures were long and as time passed they kept going getting scarier. But me being ME I didn't share any of that with anyone. I just buried it. The petite mals started out one of few minutes but slowly over about 12-20 hours got closer and loser until I couldn't tell where 1 started or ended and then the "scream" which I years later identified as the sound of all the air whooshing out of his lungs. The first year I knew him out of control meant this process would happen every 10-15 days.
Slowly as time passed I began becoming afraid. Afraid that he would go into a grand mal in the middle of the night and inadvertently hurt me. Again why would I want to share this with anybody? I stuffed it down I could almost tell you to the day my sleeping became non-existent. Feb 1973.At the time I read a lot so I would read a book or two or a half a book whatever until 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning; then I could manage to go to sleep. Ken usually left for work between 4:30-5. So it looked like I had slept all night.. We eventually figured out we had to take him to his neurologist in Portland so we planned that first trip in the late winter January of 1973. There the doctor told him he had to quit drinking a gallon to a gallon and a half of coffee a day because of the caffeine and that he would change his medication this resulted in him getting his epilepsy under control in September of 1973. By this time we had purchased a caterpillar down on the west coast and we had brought it back and began our own brush disposal business for the forest service. My non sleeping just kept marching on Non-sleeping carried on until yes I began having migraines.
By 1979 my migraines were controlling my life. I had so many of them three to six a month. It was debilitating. By1981 after we'd move to Wyoming my migraines were something I dealt with daily I really wasn't ever out of a migraine. I was overdosing on over the counter pain medicine by handfuls of whatever ibuprofen acetaminophen whatever was available none of it really worked. in September of 1981 Ken went to work for Amax coal company called me up at 9:00 and said we have insurance call the doctor and let's get your headaches under control.
The damage to me inside was there and just kept getting stomped down farther. I never acknowledged this to myself---not until 2024!!!
In early 1982 Dr. Jim Narramore prescribed me with my first dose of Pamelor which I would take on and off until now.....and beyond. This is the third time I've been put back on it. I'm at 150 mg at night; but now it takes an addition TWO medications to manage 6 hours of seep. However the 6 hr number is slowly rising.
All this time my weight has gone up/down; up/down; up/..........
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