It was hard to get myself together after my last hospitalisation, to return to life so to speak. Part of that was the immediately imminent exams and assignments. Part of the was just how shaken I was. I was shaken badly. To the core. The worst part about it was the fact that I had to return to life faster than I wanted. I had to push myself so as to keep going. I had no time to gather myself.

Keep your head above water

It’s one thing to make a return. It’s another thing entirely to be able to think about what it means.

I want to talk a bit about what I had suppressed, even from myself. There is no point sharing my great story of recovery to you if you don’t know what has been lost. Because there has been loss. Too much loss.

Yes I have returned. Yes I have brought back more than I expected. But yes I did lose more than I knew behind.

Much of what has stalled me writing this is because I know that once my feelings are shared, once my ideas are out there, they cannot be taken back. I have known and felt them, this is true, but I have taken pleasure in the fact they were my own. I liked that the secret of my return was just that, a secret. Yet we know what happens when these kind of thoughts are hidden away, stored inside.

So, this is my story.

I had a seizure. You know this. I was in the library. I felt lightheaded, broke into a hot flush, then sweat, then vomiting and lost consciousness. Micha called my cousin. Micha was two days off doing her First Aid Certificate and was panicking. The university staff wouldn’t given her a wheelchair for me, or help much in anyway. Their response was apparently appalling. I will be making a complaint. It took 20 minutes for something to happen there.

Eventually my cousin and the ambulance arrived. In the Emergency Department at Fiona Stanley Hospital not only did I have a partial focal seizure but it also appears like it progressed to convulsions. My heart was ultrasound scanned with an Echocardiogram (ECG) and my ribs were xrayed. Later I was tested with an Electroencephalogram (EEG) where it was confirmed I had had a seizure. I slept most of the next two days.

Back home it took me a week before I felt like I had what amounted to  regular amount of energy. It took a month until I felt as though my memory and concentration were intact. Obviously with exams and assignments this was an unwanted flaw and I spent most of my time in near tears fearing for my stability. Holding pens and writing words correctly took so long it is only now I have felt confident my writing here would make sense. I still have trouble focusing on one thing at night, and listening to people is difficult.

We went to the doctors but heard little from them as some of my complaints made them feel they needed to discuss the incident further before making decisions. I have also had a few days in which my heart has not felt stable, my pulse is erratic and I am in constant bouts of nausea.

Emotionally I want to return to the psychiatrist. Last year I thought I was losing the parts of my mind that I value the most and it scared me. The surgery and Rituximab had darkened these feelings to a point that I truly started to evaluate the parts of my life that were most important to me.

Since the all clear at Christmas I have felt a return of the person I was four years ago. The humour, the zest for life, the lack of mental health illnesses, the intelligence and the sociability. Since the return I have become the person I was meant to be again.

The seizure scared me and made me angry. I had to ignore that while I finished off the semester but it was there. I do not now have lesions in my brain. Nor are my B Cell Leukocytes active. There is no inflammation in my blood and my ANA is so normal you could be doubting the Lupus diagnosis. Yet now I need to prepare for the potential possibility of a life of seizure activity?

I feel like being reckless. I feel like challenging fate. I feel like doing things I have never wanted or thought to try before. Because a girl like me, that has gone through this surely can survive anything right?

I won’t know more until the end of August. Appropriate right? The one year anniversary will bring even more answers it seems. Sometimes I will I could just take a holiday from this life. I’m on holidays from university so maybe I’ll go away somewhere?