Entry 830 – Hectic Day = Hectic Brain Patterns?
Okay, I suppose I should give a bit of a backlog here first. From Friday to Saturday, Rob slept over. We went to Union Beach again on Friday, where I dragged him out in the water all the way to those rocks I talked about. Lol, he looked like a little old arthritic lady walking in the water. It was so funny! I wish he hadn’t complained as much as he did, though. Oh, well. Anyway, after the beach, we went to that park that Melanie showed me. He’s getting better on balance beam stuff, I’ll say that for him. He’s definitely getting better. Hell, if nothing else, I refuse to let him remain a statistic of medication.
Anyway, that night, he helped me rake up the prickly balls in the front yard and when my mom got back, I got some money from her and he and I went to the China Buffet. It was nice, but I kinda wish we had just gone and gotten First Wok and ate back at the house.
Well, we came back, I changed into jeans, and then we walked over to Sycamore and were there for awhile. I asked him about why he seemed okay with just remaining a medical statistic and I finally got a real answer out of him: He told me it was easier. It was easier to accept someone’s word that you can’t do something than to try it and know you’ve failed.
To which I said, however, "Well, I’m gonna tell you the same thing Thomas said to Harrison in Heart and Souls. (The direct quote is, ‘You died a failure because you never tried,’ but I paraphrased.) ‘You’ll die a failure if you never try.’" Then I told him that if he’s afraid to try something because he thinks he’ll fail, then he’s already failed. Not to mention who cares if he doesn’t succeed the first time? A lot of people don’t succeed at everything they try the first time, but that doesn’t make them a failure.
On Saturday, I drove us to this used bookstore that I found online that’s in Somerset. We went there, through rain, which was interesting . . . Really heavy rain on 287. Not fun. Anyway, the lady there showed us where the different sections are and whatnot and we were left to our own devices. Well, I found some great YA books, including one I just had to buy for Rob called They’re Torturing Teachers In Room 104. It was such a great book and I don’t know where my copy is, so I got that one for him.
Anyway, my main point for writing about this is that I [FINALLY] found a book on epilepsy. I yoinked it up and while I haven’t read the entire thing yet, what I have read definitely supports the theories I’ve come up with. Plus, Rob told me that when he has the petit mal seizures, beforehand, there’s something of a warning. He starts hearing voices in his head. I’m not sure when, but not too long ago, I asked him what phrase he could just automatically hear me saying. He told me "I love you." So I told him that if a situation ever comes up where he hears those voices, to not panic because he is, but just focus on hearing in his head me saying "I love you." Because every time he hears those voices, he does try not to listen, but eventually, it overpowers him and a seizure happens.
I gave him that suggestion of mentally hearing me saying something before I started reading that book. But that book gave me the medical explanation for why my idea might work. As well as what’s happening to Rob that those voices get overpowering soon enough.
See, especially when a person has taken a head injury, the neurons in the surrounding area are permanently affected. Now, I think a lot of this depends on the age of the person as well, because the brain can adjust to injury, other parts of the brain picking up the slack if it’s given enough time to adjust. But Rob was twelve, so while there may have been some chance of other parts of his brain picking up the slack, there wasn’t a great chance.
Anyway. The book said that a seizure starts because one pack of damaged neurons decides to go nuts and it affects the pack of neurons next to it, which spreads to a third, and so on. It’s basically like a stack of domino’s. You knock over one, more and more are gonna fall until there aren’t any left. And that’s basically a seizure.