I am, as I write this, in the process of ‘aborting a seizure’ as my neurologist calls it. You are joining us in the middle of the process. To recap, I woke with an unidentifiable restlessness. After drifting around the margin of sleep for a while, hoping to recover a dream state that was not broken. Dreams in this pre-seizure state (named that because it always has led to a seizure without the intervention of ativan), those dreams do not float effortlessly and insightfully through the landscape of dreams, but tend to move erratically and crash into and drag against the thoughts and memories that hang like spectators around the walls of the dream space, they catch on these things and get stuck. They can’t progress. The underlying dysfunction is causing a persistent anxiety that won’t pass away into resumed sleep. The dream state is unable to function, clogged and congested with snagged and crashed dreams that litter the dreamway.
Caused by the same underlying dysfunction that messed up the dreams, are the physiologic manifestations producing an imperitive to void both the bowels and the stomach. The insistence and urgency of this physiological response modulates in direct match to the degree of underlying CNS disfunction. On rare occasions the shit and vomit came totally involuntarily and instantly in whatever situation I found myself; usually in bed.
That did not happen this time. Not in Bed.
Back to recapping todays events, when it became clear that today’s mild episode was was escalating, I took 4 0.5mg of Ativan sublingual. This constituted throwing a wet blanket on those clearly misbehaving elements in my brain. This agitated the misbehaving ones even more. Eventually, the underlying seizure activity increased rather than decreased–focal seizures I think they are called-. As they seemed likely to break through that first wet blanker, I placed another wet blanket of 4 Ativan 0.5mg on top, which left them mostly grumbling but resigned for now. And am close to nodding off uncontrolably, and the connection to my motor controls is no longer broadband speed, but now is more like a 14.4 dialup
This is probably the point at which the abortive attempt is complete. I am getting groggy, have difficulty typing the right letters, and am basically no more useful than if I’d actually had a seizure, except I didn’t lose consciousness, didn’t void uncontrollably from either end, And didn’t dislocate my left shoulder (which it wants to do whenever I seize). Not to menmtion all the muscles, and I mean ALL the muscles that each would have been strained beyond its limits, leaving large amounts of adenosine triphosphate loaded in the muscle tissue, causing pain for days, some damage to the tissue, and oddly enough, also causing new muscle growth.
Now safe from a seizure, but semiconscious, I will retire to the bed. And the dreams are finding their way unencumbered once again.
I tried.