Thomas Jefferson High

Walking into the long, rectangular room of waxy-looking tables, I was greeted with a wave of cold; Room 5 was easily ten degrees colder than the linoleum hallway leading to it. Maybe the absence of hormones in skinny jeans and patterned t-shirts chattering and texting their ways to class had something to do with it.

I saw Marcee from the Epilepsy Foundation of Colorado at the far end directing a man with a projector and liaising with what looked like a teacher. Another girl stood nearby, wearing the slightly unsure look of a teenager wanting to help but not quite sure how. She must be the Youth Council girl. A hug to Marcee, a handshake to the girl, Delany, and I began realigning tables to face our panel, making sure that no one would be blocked by the grey projector cart. A ringing that sounded more like a telephone than a bell floated in from the hallway - our cue. We rearranged a few more chairs just as students began to file into the classroom.

The classes from Period 1 of 5 settled into their seats and Marcee stood up: "Hi, guys. We're here today to talk to you about epilepsy." A middle-aged teacher interrupted with a sharp, "phones away. No electronics." I thought with a smile that in my day, phones seen outside of lockers were confiscated. Not that I had a phone until eleventh grade anyway. A scuffle came from the corner as cells were shoved into backpacks and purses to a soundtrack of muttering. When faces had all surfaced again, Marcee continued, introducing Delany and me before beginning a video on epilepsy awareness made a few months ago by the Youth Council. The ROTC students sat closer to the front, and in the moving light from the pulled-down screen, I watched their faces, polite and attentive, thinking of questions to ask when prompted during Q&A. The lights came on when the Epilepsy Foundation's red flame logo appeared on the screen, causing me to squint while my eyes adjusted. I took a sip from the neutered latte in front of me, lamenting my one year post-surgical moratorium on caffeine. I watched Delany stand and introduce herself, much better prepared than I with a typed up script of her history with epilepsy. I pushed back my blue chair when she sat down and stood to deliver the mini-bio I've given so many times before: I was diagnosed when I was seven; I have simple partial seizures; this is what happens when I have a seizure; I tried a dozen medications, but none of them worked; I had surgery last January; I have a scar that runs in an arc, covering the length of my head; I haven't had a seizure in ten months.

"Does anyone have a question?", Marcee asked. One hand went up. "Yes, you in the black shirt." When his was answered, two more hands came up. Then three. They really were interested; they wanted to learn. Well, even if they didn't, they did a very good job of hiding it. I was touched.

Throughout the five periods, three different kids told us they had epilepsy: two girls in a dance team class whose friends all knew talked openly about their own experiences and one boy a few periods later came up to our table after his class, asking about the Youth Council. A boy who came through at least twice with different classes told us that he'd been at the talk last year and remembered what to do when a woman in his church had a tonic-clonic seizure one Sunday. Smiles crossed my face at these stories; these kids were learning.

It wasn't until 2:45 that I walked through the parking lot with Marcee, my coat buttoned up but my mittons at home. "That was really great." "Yeah, it was."

Six Reminders

Just above a small mole, a freckle really, on the back of my right hand, there is a circle - darker than the sun-kissed tan of my skin with a white dot in the middle. It sits atop a blue vein that carries blood to and from the fingers that type my thoughts, nourishing them, feeding them the oxygen they need to flutter over my keyboard before carrying their leftovers, all they didn’t use, to be pumped back through my heart longing for caffeine and my lungs still thick with mucus after four days of bed rest and antibiotics. The scar watches me from its post, telling me that the landscape of the back of my hand that I know so well has been changed forever. I wiggle my fingers and watch it move side to side with the tendons below it. So intricate the human hand is; so delicate. I watch the scar, and I accept it.

There are times when I wish it would just disappear already, leave me be, give me back my body. There are times when I mourn the unblemished skin that used to stretch over everything, dark olive covering my hands, my arms, my legs, my back, my chest, my stomach, my face. Still I go back and forth, oscillating between peace and frustration, but as the rollercoaster slows, I find myself moving closer and closer to acceptance.

There are four scars on my hands, one on my forehead and one on my scalp, but it’s the small dot on the back of my right hand that I see the most. It is a constant reminder of what I did; what I went through. I look at that scar, left by the IV port that stayed in my hand for too long, becoming stiff, dry and painful before finally being moved to its left partner. I think of my life and how different it is; how different I am. It is unsightly, yes, but as I get farther away from the surgeries that bore it, this scar reminds me of my strength, my will. The small silver dots on the undersides of each wrist twice fed me anesthesia as the vice that kept me still carved the scar on my forehead and the scalpel sliced the shaved skin where my hair once was, exposing my skull to the saw that removed it and the plates that replaced it, leaving a red-tinged dent to span the length of my head. Six scars in total. Six defacements that left me a new person, that gave me a new life.

I stand in the bathroom every night, toothpaste burning my tongue as I brush my teeth, and I stare at the dent on my forehead. I remember it as a scab, a burnt sienna covering to a thumbprint-sized relief an inch and a half above my eyebrows. Today it looks like no more than a short wrinkle; the puckered scar buried below new tissue like a birthday gift hidden under brightly colored paper thin as onion skin.

Back and forth I push the toothbrush and look through the mirror at John standing behind me, light blue toothpaste showing between his lips, threatening to drip onto the back of my t-shirt if he doesn’t spit soon. I can’t help but smile as I watch him and think to myself that the scars I wear helped us find each other. The best decisions of my life intertwined.

Mail

I got a letter in the mail today from my neurologist with the results from the last minute MRI I took earlier this week. It echoed the message my doctor left on my answering machine, assuring me that everything looks just fine. There's a "red-shade area of encephalomalacia measuring nearly 4 cm in diameter in the anterior left parietal lobe", meaning that there's a hole in my brain, but it's the hole that was made intentionally on January 24th and looks normal. No strange liquids are secreting into areas where they shouldn't be and my sinuses and mastoids (though I have no idea what those are), are clear. So pretty much it's all quiet on the left parietal front.

Between that and a take out menu featuring a cartoon of a 1950s woman on a motorcycle with a man behind her doing various inappropriate things to promote the daily specials was my credit card bill. It's raining outside, so I walked quickly up the uncovered stairs and waited until I reached my apartment to open the letter. Tearing at the lip of the envelope, I ungracefully pulled out the long sheet of paper that began with a sum total that made my heart sink and my stomach clench up. Honestly it could have been five dollars and I would've had the same reaction, though. I scanned down the list of purchases, mostly grocery stores, a couple coffee shops, a cell phone, my Netflix account and the monthly FreeCreditReport.com report that isn't actually free. I read through the list and all I kept thinking was, what am I doing? What am I doing? I have no income, I have no job, I write all day but that actually costs money if you think about the electric bill being augmented by the increased use of my computer. Okay, so writing is good, and I do want to tell my story even if I'm the only one who ever reads it. And yes, I'm doing a fair amount of volunteer work with the Epilepsy Foundation of Colorado. The walk is in two days and I only need a hundred dollars more to reach my fundraising goal of a thousand dollars, which I have to say I'm pretty proud of. Still, I feel like I'm slacking. I feel like I should be doing something more, I should be getting back on the saddle and riding it like a pro, kicking ass and taking names and working million-hour weeks like I used to. I know that I have great earning potential, but I'm not putting it to use sitting here in my kitchen writing about my feelings, drinking neutered coffee and popping Tylenol. I mean, what the hell do I expect to feel when I open a credit card bill? A check written out to me saying, "Sorry you're feeling stressed, Erica, here's a little something on us"? Of course not. I don't know, I'm probably just rambling now.

I've applied to a couple jobs now, all finance or business development jobs, bringing me back to my econ roots. I have all of this training in economics, finance and business and it seems wasteful to not be using it, especially when those jobs tend to bring in a fairly nice income. I miss making money. It's just so frustrating though, because even as I sit here and write this, I can feel the left anterior parietal region of my head is trying to decide if it wants to be a dull or a sharp pain. When is this going to be over? When am I going to feel confident that I can go into a workplace and last a whole day? Not crazy hours, just a regular 40-50 hour week. That's all I want, but can I handle it? I don't know the answer to that. I just feel like I'm floating in limbo and it's getting hard to breathe.

Maybe I'm too far into my head now and should probably go heat up some chili and watch an episode of Prison Break with my boyfriend before going to sleep. That's probably best. Things tend to be much clearer in the morning.

Naps

I still take naps almost every day. I don't know how much of my fatigue is from surgery and how much is from my medication, which is still at pre-surgery levels, but no matter the cause, I'm getting tired of it (no pun intended). I wish I could make it through a whole day like everyone else, but I just get so tired, I have to stop and recharge like a four year old phone battery. I used to have serious fatigue before my surgery, but back then I could mask it with caffeine. Decaf's placebo effect works occasionally, but on the whole it's not much help. Ah, the days when I could shotgun a Red Bull and be back in business - at least for another couple hours.

Agh! It's just frustrating! I have so many things I want to do, need to do, each day, but I feel like I can only make it through half of them. Time slides by, more slippery each time I try to catch it, and so soon the day is gone. Between heavy eyes that close on their own and the headaches that have crept back in and leave me out of play, it's as though I only have a few productive hours every day. I'm over it. I don't know what I can do about it, though. I feel trapped.

Second Night Back

Tonight is my second night back in Denver. So far it’s good. It’s really good to see my friends again spend time with them, going on walks around the park, “running errands” at Crate & Barrel, barbequing kebabs under the stairwell and just talking. I do miss my family, but it’s good for me to be around people my own age. My entire apartment is smaller than my parents’ kitchen, but it’s home and I like it. Of course my kitchen table triples as my dining room table and my office, but the wall behind it is lavender – every room is different colors: lavender, yellow, light lime green and deep red (the only one I didn’t pick and can’t paint over). It’s cheerful and homey and more of a haven than a cocoon. After months in my love cocoon, sleeping in my old bed, having dinner every night with my parents, it’s time for me to burst forth as a butterfly, leave the nest, and all of those other growing up clichés.

I haven’t been getting overwhelmed in the same way I used to, where I would shut down and need to extricate myself from the situation as quickly as possible. I do have to remind myself to take naps, though harder than that is actually tearing myself away from whatever I’m doing and make myself lie down so I’ll be able to make it through the rest of the day without glazing over and crashing. With all of the unpacking between reunions, I’ve been much more active than even in the Bahamas. I like it. As long as I do take breaks. It’s good for me to feel like part of society again; to feel like a twenty-something again. Tomorrow, my friends are throwing a little welcome home barbeque for me, complete with all non-alcoholic drinks (save one glass of champagne each to toast my successful surgeries). It’s also Palm Sunday, so I’m gonna go to church, which I’m excited about, but I’ll have to take a nap between the two activities since I’m not allowed to partake in the host’s espresso machine and I’d hate to fall asleep during my own party.

When I opened the door to my apartment for the first time on Thursday, there were flowers in all different shapes and shades of pink as well as a sign saying, “Welcome Home Erica”, signed by my friends in my building. The living room and my bedroom were full of the boxes that Eve brought over from the crawl space in which I’d put them back in November. I couldn’t, and still can’t, believe how lucky I am to have such wonderful friends.

It’s funny to come back home in the mid-afternoon or later at night, tired and ready to start in on this task or that, and have no background noise. No footfalls from different sizes of feet carrying varying weights that each move with their own timbre. No TV playing in the next room. No opening and closing of the fridge; no chopping or scraping; no one building a fire; no one asking where their keys are and saying they’ll be back after fill-in-the-blank. It’s quiet. Until I put on some music, the only sounds are people talking in the open-air stairwells of our building and the one next door. It’s strange living in an apartment that’s empty but for me and my thoughts. It makes me miss my parents, my aunts, and even the two girls who work for my dad’s consulting business. Most of me is glad to be on my own again, but likely it will be like the latter.

Now, finally, I’m completely exhausted and need to go sleep before I fall asleep on my computer permanently.

Good night.