Part 2 - The Last Seizure...IN HIS WORDS

Today, my husband continues to share what he endured during the last seizure on March 8. This was the worst he had experienced, and the emotional fall impacted him for months.

This was the seizure that ultimately drove us to leave our home in a charming Richmond suburb and return to the support of family last April.

Daddy and baby Johanna in our Virginia home about a month after the last seizure.

IN HIS WORDS

I think two of the greatest desires in having a life struggle are to want people’s sympathy and their understanding. But when your affliction is something you can’t really explain and people wouldn’t really understand it if you could, then it’s next to impossible to achieve either one. It took me a while to figure it out, but I finally gave up on the fruitless pursuit of other’s sympathy and understanding because I realized that the fruit of not getting it was self-pity. Self-pity is the antithesis, the kryptonite of my ability to recover and carry on after a seizure. Now back to the seizure.

As I regain consciousness, the scene is one that has become all too familiar. I am strapped to a stretcher in the emergency room of a hospital surrounded by figures in hospital garb and the EMT unit is still hanging around. The screams have ended, but I am crying uncontrollably while the nurse is asking me questions to see if I am fully conscious yet. I am able to answer her questions. The year is 2013, my full name is Adrian Michael Seely, unfortunately Obama is president, and the list goes on.

As I begin to gain some semblance of control, the same question as always that has yet to be answered and I have yet to stop asking, penetrates through my seared, pained filled brain. WHY!?!?!?!? Especially, why NOW? Since moving to Richmond I have been happier than I have been for more than fifteen years. I was positive that this was where we were going to put down roots, and now this? Also, why was it so BAD? The seizures have been getting progressively worse but this one felt like it ripped my soul from my toe nails through my ears while dislocating every joint on the way. Julles is standing beside me holding my hand with her tears of fear, confusion, loss, and sympathy mixing with mine.

By now some of you may be wondering if this can really be all that bad. It is and worse. For this particular seizure, it took five fire fighters and at least two paramedics to fight me onto a stretcher. (The post seizure stage is called the postictal state and during that time I am basically sleep walking with aggressive tendencies and super human strength with no control over or memory of what I do). The mobile x-ray team at the hospital who saw me come in refused to come do my shoulder x-rays, and when I was discharged they cleared the hall before I walked out. In other seizures I have dislocated shoulders, broken my foot, gone into A-fib of the heart, and repeatedly covered myself and the room in blood. That is all bad but what makes it worse is when Julles leaves for work and we spend every second of that day wondering…….is it now? And that is the true reason I have decided to tell my story, because of the consistent way God has covered us in the face of constant threat and danger. The twist in the story is that I am the constant threat and danger.

- ADRIAN