Last Monday, as I had just gotten done loading the kids in my dad’s car, I was hit with a grand mal seizure.

I don’t remember this so my recollection of it is entirely predicated on what others who saw it and were aware of it told me. I was on the phone with my sister-in-law and a friend of hers and managed to go down with the phone still in my hand, so they saw everything. I dropped to the ground at my kids’ therapy clinic in front of everyone and emergency services were very nearly called, but my oldest son told everyone that I had epilepsy (complete with diagnosis and all), that I was having a seizure, and that I had an action plan. He didn’t say this in quite so many words but he managed to get the point across to the point that someone else didn’t summon emergency services. I continue to be surprised over this because I was told by numerous sources that my grand mal seizure was the most frightening thing they had ever seen, and it made me feel bad that I had a seizure like this in front of so many people. I continued to stay on the phone video chatting with my relatives and this happened a second time with me dropping to the ground — I remember hitting my head on the concrete beneath it, not feeling it because I was seizing — and managing to convince my father not to take me to the hospital “because my kids needed me at home”. My loved ones saw me do this again.

I will be making an appointment with my new primary care physician to transfer care of my epilepsy back over to a neurologist next week. I’m told that people thought I was going to die having that initial seizure.

I can’t leave my family. I can’t leave my loved ones. I’m not ready to risk that. Send mother fucking Tweet.

In the coming days I’ll be writing about it more in detail, mainly for my own processing and healing.

I’ve now made an epilepsy tag for this blog because I am just going to own it at this point, messy and all.