Entry 836 – Stop Bitching And Start A Revolution!

Hey.  I know, I haven’t written in probably over two weeks.  I’ve had no inspiration to do so, despite definitely having things to write about.  ::Sighs::  My mind’s too preoccupied with this whole epilepsy thing . . .  The more I find out from Rob, the more the entire situation drives me nuts.

His mom kept a folder, something of a journal, of different seizures he’s had.  It’s not as detailed as I’d hoped, and it doesn’t mention any seizures after around March of ’99.  (That was the middle of his junior year, and I know he’s had ones after that.)  I’m hoping the floppy in the folder has more comprehensive information in it . . .

But anyway, I read through the entire folder last night, (even though I’m quite positie my eyes went swirly after reading this one letter from one of his doctors . . .) and then talked to Rob after he got off work.  Because there was something I couldn’t figure out about him.  When he was first diagnosed as epileptic, he was prescribed 45 mg (milligrams) of whatever medication they started him with.  But as he got older, the number went up.  First 60, then 90, then 120, and God only knows what he’s at now.  Plus, the number of times he had to take the medication increased as he got older.  If I remember correctly, when it was at 60, he was taking it twice a day.  When it got to 90, it was 30mg three times a day.  And he takes medication three times a day now, though I don’t know what the mg number is.

I was thinking about it before I picked him up and it was almost as if as he got older, he just gave up any chance of being seizure-free.  And because he gave up, the dosage went up.

When I talked to him at Sycamore last night, I was asking him why he never looked in that folder before.  At first he was saying, "Because it was business stuff."  To which I replied, "Yeah, but business about you."  (Cuz simply put, if it were me, either I’d be writing the stuff myself, or I’d want to know every word my mom wrote about me.)  Anyway, I finally got the real reason out of him.  I believe this is a direct quote from him:  "Because it meant accepting the truth."  Accepting that he has this thing, that it’s not just going to go away, that it’s there for life.

Yet I told him that I didn’t entirely believe that.  There has to be a cure for epilepsy.  There HAS to be.  I just don’t know what it is, and I wish I could find out.

 Anyway, I’m writing this several days later because I don’t seem to just be able to sit down and write an entire damn entry.  I believe it’s now the 30th?  I don’t know.  In any case, it’s Sunday.  I was gonna outline in here what happened on the 10th.  It was a Monday and Rob had off.  He and I were gonna take a bike of mine over to Sports Authority and get the inner tube changed.  Then we were gonna bike/walk to his house, get a bike from there, and bike back to mine.  Well, the bike couldn’t be looked at at Sports Authority until the next day, so we left it there and started walking to Rob’s house.  I greatly underestimated the distance to do that . . .

Lol.  I can look back on it now and laugh, but he was complaining about being tired and everything before we even got to 35.  By the time we got to his street, I was sick of it, and we had a mini-argument.  He just wanted to go in for awhile so he could rest, and while I wasn’t opposed to taking a small break, I was very opposed to hearing him complain more and all that.  One of the things that I said to him was that if he wanted someone to baby him, don’t look to me, cuz I wasn’t gonna do it.

Yeah, we were actually on he verge of breaking up right there.  He actually just walked away from me and back to his house.  And I couldn’t help murmuring , as I watched him walk away, "I thought you siad you’d fight."

I started to walk back to my house, but I only made it as far as the next side street when I decided, ‘Nope.  I’m dying.  I need a drink, or something.’  Not to mention I REALLY didn;t want to walk all that way back by myself.

Anyway, I went to his house and rang the bell.  He answered, we hashed things out, and we got two bikes from his garage and started out.  He was fine on the one bike until a car turned down the side street and he had to veer off to the side and put his feet down.  Then he had trouble starting up again.

I rode/walked the bike and so did he, until we got to more level ground where we could ride on the sidewalk.  We’d switched bikes, the one I’d used at first had a lower seat and I figured that would be better for him to use till he got back in the swing of things.  Anyway, I got started on the other one that was a bit high for me, and took off.  At one point, on the road that leads back behind Longbrook, I called out, "You doing all right?"  And Rob didn’t answer.  I turned around at the next driveway, got off the bike, and looked behind me, but I didn’t see him.  That worried me, but only a bit.  I thought maybe I’d gotten further ahead of him than I thought.  I took a few steps in that direction, figuring I’d see him bike up at any second.  But then I saw his hand come up and I realized he’d fallen.  I started running, about three different thoughts simultaneously running through my head.  One: "Oh, my God!"  Two: "Drop the bike, I can run faster if I do!"  Three: "Damnit, no, it’s not my bike, I can’t just drop it!"

Anyway, I ran back to him, letting go of the bike when I was close enough, and I knelt down next to him.  He’d fallen on these decorative yard rocks, (you know the type?) and had hit his head on a guardrail that was there.  I put my arm around his shoulders and just held him as he ranted.  I couldn’t blame him for being upset.  He sarted to get his cell phone to call one of his parents to pick him up, but I wouldn’t let him.  I told him we could stil do this, we didn’t need someone coming and picking him or both of us up.  That’s when he really started ranting, because he was asking me why not?  Saying that he obviously couldn’t do this, he couldn’t even stay on a stupid bike, asking me why I drag him on these things, because he’s not like me.  He can’t do all this outside stuff and have any energy left over, and didn’t I understand that?  He had his sunglasses on through all that, but the way his voice kept breaking, I could tell he was either crying, or holding back tears.  I took off his sunglasses not too long after, because the only thing I could answer to him was that I thought he was like me.  I thought he could do all this.  All he needed to do was get back into the practice of it.  So it takes him a bit longer, so what?  That he would do it.  That I believed he could.

When I took off his sunglasses, (cuz I also wanted to see where he’d hit his head,) I saw that he was crying.  I wiped a few tears away and got a look at his head.  It wasn’t bleeding or anything, though it’s the second hard hit his head’s taken in my company.

Anyway, not too long

after, I asked if he was okay and did he need a hand up.  He answered sarcastically a few different times to, "Do you need a hand?"  I remember one answer was, "I need a car," or "I need a license," or something like that.  Anyway, needless to say, he wasn’t in a great mood, and it didn;t help that as we were walking the bikes down the sidewalk, he kept almost slipping cuz he was walking on the very edge of the sidewalk, or his leg would hit the pedal.  Then he noticed what time it was, and one of the things we were gonna do that day was pick up his medication from Pathmark, before six pm, when the pharmacy closes.  It was a bit after five and we were still a good hour’s walking distance from my house.  So he started pretty much panicking about that, saying that he needed to get there, it wasn’t negotiable, he didn’t even have enough medication to last him the rest of that day.  I didn’t let him stress on it too lon, though.  I just simply said, "Listen to me.  We’ll get there in time.  I don’t know how, but we’ll do it.  We’ll get there and you’ll get your medication.  I promise."

Honestly, I doubt he fully believed me, but whether itwas what I said or something in my voice, I guess it gave him enough reassurance to stop stressing out so much.  At least outwardly.  Anyway, we got to a traffic light near Main Street and the train station.  I told Rob I was gonna take off on one of the bikes and pedal my way back down the Hudson Trail and to Pathmark.  I’d get the stuff for him, somehow, and then come back and meet him wherever he was on the trail.  So he gave me his cell phone so I could use it and I took off, hoping against hope that I’d make it in time, because it was already five thirty.  At the top of the hill, near Main Street, I came to a stop and called my mom, figuring that she could shell out the money this once and Rob could pay her back a bit at a time or something, and she could get there if I couldn’t by six.  Anyway, I called her and told her what was going on, saying that we were in Matawan and the place closed at six and he needed to get the stuff today, and she tells me they don’t close at six, they close at nine.

"What?" was my basic reaction.

I asked if she’d call and make sure of that, so she put me on hold, called, came back to me and said yeah, they close at nine and his prescription is there, ready and waiting.  I thanked her and went to sit on this low stone wall to wait for Rob.

Lol, I thought about joking with him and saying the place had already closed, we were out of luck.  But I discarded that idea pretty quickly, seeing as how he was in a bad enough mood as it was, and that medication is something he truly does need.  He didn’t need me joking about him not being able to get it even if he was in a good mood.  He probably would’ve taken my head off if I’d joked about it that day.

Anyway, he came up to me and gave me an odd stare, and I told him we didn’t have to hurry, the place closed at nine, I’d just gotten that confirmed by my mom.

So yeah, we got back to my house, talked to Art Scott for a bit when he called, and then went out biking agan to the Chinese place near Veteran’s.  Once again, Rob was having trouble biking it, so we walked most of the way.  We waited at the Chinese place for our food and when we got it, I was saying that I would bike back to my house and get the car, then come pick him up.  So I grabbed the smaller bike that he’d been using so I could mount and dismount more easily and not jostle the food so much.  But Rob tried riding the other bike and he had a much easier time of it.  And I realized why.  The handlebars on the bike that he’d fallen from practically had a mind of their own!

So we biked back to my house, ate Chinese, and he ended up staying over that night, too.  He called his parents on his cell and was talking to his mom, staying he was gonna stay over that night, too, if it was okay with me.  I said sure it was, it was up to him, he knew he was welcome here.  Anyway, yeah, he stayed over that night.  I like sleeping next to him.

Let’s see . . .  I think it was the Saturday before that entire excursion, I’d gone and filled out an application at a flower shop near me.  Tuesday, the day after the entire excursion, I dropped Rob off at work and decided to see the staus of my application, because I was never called on Saturday, like the guy said I would be.  Anyway, I get there, I talked to a guy for a bit, and he told me to come in on Thursday morning.

I worked there for a few hours on Thursday but I’d done something to my foot during the entire trek on Monday, and asked to leave early so I could put ice on it and rest at home.  That’s what I did, after once again dropping Rob off at work.  I sat with ice on it and played around on my computer with Solitaire and whatnot.  The guy’d told me to take Friday off and come back on Saturday at ten.  So that’s what I did.  But the more I thought about it on Saturday as I was there . . . I don’t know.  The more the juob just didn’t seem like it was for me.  So I told him I was sorry, I didn’t think this was right for me, and thanked him for the opportunity.  He gave me forty bucks for the time I had spent there, and I I left.

I went back to my house and called Rob, asking if it was okay if I biked over there, (cuz yeah, the bikes were still there from our adventure.)  He said okay, I told him it’d be about an hour, and I took off.  I made it to the train station in record time.  (I have no idea why, but for some reason, biking didn’t hurt my foot, even thought walking made me limp really badly within a couple of minutes.)  Anyway, made it to the train station, and the flea market thinsg were still up.  And I saw a bike there.  Looked like a good one, too.  So I stopped and looked at it, and the womn there told me she was selling it for twenty, but she was about to leave, so she’d give it to me for ten.  Despite already being on a bike, I bought the other one.  So I basically had to walk both bikes the rest of the way there, with my foot killing me.  Not to mention my arms killing me because especially the one mountain bike of Jonathan’s was not a light one!

Anyway, I finally made it to Rob’s and his mom gave us a ride over to my house.  Me and Rob stayed in my room for a little while when I decided I wanted to wash my car, and of course, get soaked in the process.  Despite his complaining, I got him wet, and we go into a semi-argument about all that.  He didn’t want to get wet, he was already cold, etc., etc., etc.  I filled up a bucket of water at one point and gave hi the hose, telling him that now he has a way to get back at me.  But he didn’t use it.  So there we were, the bucket of water behind us, on my car, and us sitting at the end of the driveway.  Finally, I got up and picked up the bucket of water.  Rob just sat there, saying that he knew I was gonna do it anyway, might as well pour it over him and get it over with.  So I did.  I turned it upside down and it poured over both of us.

I admit

, it was cold.  But it also seemed to wash away our argument.  We went in and dried off after that and snuggled under my blanket for awhile.

I still have Easter to cover, but I think this’ll do for this entry.  There’s more coming, though, so watch for it.

Bye! 

P.S. – The title of this entry comes from a bumper sticker I saw on theback of a car on the way back to my house from our biking adventure.  And that’s exactly what it said.  "Stop Bitching and Start a Revolution!"  I told Rob that that sticker SO related to him.  Lol.