It’s hard to celebrate good news when surrounded by bad news.
I’m officially epileptic seizure free! After over a decade of epileptic seizures, of medications that slowly drained the life from my body, of neglectful doctors who wouldn’t admit that they didn’t know what they were doing, I’m finally epileptic seizure free.
I didn’t give up even though I wanted to many times, my mum never gave up on me and my new medical team of Pete and Sasha never even considered that my case was worth anything less than all the work they put into it. It all paid off because I’m 21 and epileptic seizure free.
This is worth celebrating and thankfully, while covid-19 lockdown limits me from doing much, I have people who remind me to not forget the good and I’ve sold a few of the paintings I create to cope with the bad, so I can afford to treat myself in celebration. (Buying a hoodie from my own merch line that you can get here is a good treat, right?)
Unfortunately for me, in the same mouthful as the above good news, I was also given bad news. My Functional Neurological Disorder (FND) is worsening and intensifying. I must try a new approach with my treatment plan as what I’m currently doing clearly isn’t working. New things scare me. Treatment for FND can be a lot harder than Epilepsy treatment in certain aspects, which is disappointing as I’m already exhausted. I’ve spent majority of my life fighting with my body and the medical system to be able to get to where I am. I just want to rest but I can’t afford to stop treatment without the high risk of slipping further behind.
FND is also making it hard to process that I’m epileptic seizure free as part of it getting worse is my non-epileptic seizures (caused by FND) are beginning to imitate my epileptic seizures. My FND is accessing the part of my mind that holds memories of my epileptic seizure patterns and uses that information to replicate the thing I’m celebrating the end of.
It’s hard to feel happy that my epileptic seizures are gone when, quite literally, every other morning I’m waking up feeling like I just had another. At least now I know it’s FND but that doesn’t make it much easier.
FND steals my independence and abilities, it takes away my ability to live life rather than just survive, but as if that wasn’t enough it takes away the joy of the miracle I never thought would happen. I’ve spent countless occasions feeling hopeless with tears pouring down face for over half my life, feeling like I’ll never get to feel the euphoria of being seizure free. I was right. I’m epileptic seizure free but I’m yet to share in the euphoria my community experiences when reaching such milestones because I’m not yet truly seizure free and yet again I’m not sure I ever will be.
I share this, despite it being quite sad, because there are many stories that sound like the opposite of mine but where’s the diversity. It took me a while to be able to process my feelings into such words but I’m sure I’m not the only one who has such an experience or feels alone in this part of their journey.
It’s also just good to tell the world how you feel sometimes and for the world to have diverse perspectives.
P.S. if you could all congratulate the young Renee for making it this far when she never thought she would, that would warm my heart for both young and old Renee.
Purple Adventures 