Tag: epilepsy

All The World’s A Stage

Recently, my son performed in his first school play. School has been physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting for him this year. He likes school, but it takes a huge toll on his body and mind doing full days. In an otherwise difficult year, the play was the thing he most looked forward to, so we adjusted his schedule to allow him to rehearse with his class and have a part in the show.

He worked hard rehearsing for his role. Memorization is extremely difficult for him, but he practiced reciting his lines almost every day. We’d catch him at random times singing the songs from the show as he played with his toys or started to drift off to sleep. It was the first thing in a long time that he had that was his and that he was excited about.

When the day of the show finally arrived, it started with six seizures before breakfast. He had big circles under his eyes as he slowly crawled out of bed. As it goes with epilepsy, we didn’t know why he had more seizure than normal. But we let him rest most of the day with our fingers crossed that he would feel well enough to go to the show. Even after an afternoon nap, he still seemed tired but, thankfully, his excitement and adrenaline gave him the boost he needed to make it out of the house.

My wife and I sat in the audience anxiously waiting for the show to begin. I had a big smile on my face when I saw my son peak his head around the curtain. I heard the kids getting into position and felt my heart start to beat faster. Finally, the curtain opened, and I thought we made a terrible mistake letting him do the show that night.

I could see by the look on his face that he wasn’t really present. The energy that got him out the door seemed gone. Most of the time, he looked lost on the stage, bouncing between children to try to find the spot where he should be. I felt helpless every time we made eye contact. I felt angry that they didn’t set it up better or give him a buddy to remind him where he should be. While these thoughts raced through my head, I tried to keep a smile and to be a friendly face in the audience for him.

My wife and I struggle with finding the right place for my son. Not just with school, but finding environments that are safe for him and that try to understand what life is like for him. Watching him on the stage, unable to find his place, brought that fear of him never finding that place center stage. It acted out my anxiety of what life will look like for him as he gets older because the world doesn’t know him and doesn’t understand him. I saw on that stage a future for my son where he spends his life bouncing around, bouncing off people, endlessly lost.

When the show was over, my son came running off the stage and into our arms. He was happy. He had just done something impossibly hard and felt good about himself. At that moment, everything I was feeling melted away and I held him and told him how proud of him I was.

It’s hard to not get lost in those visions of what the future will look like for my son. There have been too many times where I get swept up in those feelings and miss what is happening right in front of me, in the present where my son needs me to be. It’s in those moments where he continues to show me what he is capable of and remind me that the future is unwritten and filled with as many possibilities as it will be limitations. The only thing that is certain is what we have at this moment. As I held my son and felt his joy, I didn’t want to miss it.

Lessons From The Field

The welcome arrival of Spring brings with it sunshine, warmer weather, and baseball. Last season was incredibly special for my son and our family because of the team we were on and the experiences that my son had. At a time when my son desperately needed something to hold on to and an outlet of his own, he found it in baseball.

This season, we are on a new team but there is no reason to think his experience will be any different. We’re fortunate to be reunited with coaches who knew my son from when I coached him and the coaches’ daughter in tee-ball a few years ago. When we reached out to them to give them background on my son, they already knew about him and welcomed him wholly.

Baseball has been good for my son. It provides him with an opportunity to be around other children, to have fun, and to get better at something that he enjoys. It has been good for me, too, by giving me opportunities to step back and let my son have his own experiences, his own successes and failures, and to let him figure out from those experiences who he is and who he wants to become.

Last weekend, my son had a chance to pitch for the first time. He was excited. I was terrified. My brain immediately went to what could go wrong. His throwing accuracy is not the best. I was worried that he would be embarrassed. I was worried that he would walk everyone. I was worried that he would lose the lead and that his teammates and coaches would be disappointed. I was worried that he would like it but wouldn’t be asked to do it again.

Before the inning started, I took him to the side to get him warmed up. He wasn’t great, but he wasn’t terrible. Then they called him up. As I walked him back to the field, I flooded him with instruction and advice. He threw a few more warm-up pitches with the coach and seemed to do ok, but I held my breath as the first batter came to the plate.

The thing about my son is that he likes to play the part. He’ll see a movie of a baseball player and add the drama and flourishes to what he is doing, even if it’s not appropriate for his situation. On the pitcher’s mound, he looks towards first as if he is going to pick off the runner, not understanding that in his league, the players have to stay on the bag anyway. While he is on a base, he’ll crouch way down like the player did in the Jackie Robinson movie, even though it’s not practical to run from that position. I get frustrated because I think he could do a much better job if he could just focus on the task even though many times he simply can’t. But then he also might not have as much fun.

On the mound, he threw a few strikes but a lot of balls. He walked a lot of batters and hit one. I could see him start acting instead of following his steps. I tried to get him to settle down before I realized I was likely making it worse. My frustration and anxiety were bubbling up as I watched our sizable lead shrink. The coach was finally able to put in a different pitcher and I started to think about the conversation I would have to have with my son. Should we talk about not playing the part and just focusing on doing his steps? Should we talk about how they may not ask him to pitch again? Should we talk about how he can do better?

When the inning was over, my son ran off the field with a big smile on his face. “Did you have fun?”, I asked. “That was amazing,” he said.

After the game, my son and I played catch. He threw the ball right to me every time. I asked him what was different between throwing the ball to me and pitching and he said that when he was pitching, he was nervous because everyone was watching him. I realized that I was so focused on the mechanics of pitching and trying to get him to stay out of his head that I didn’t think to check in with how he was feeling going up to the mound for the first time. I was so focused on my anxiety and my frustrations that I didn’t ask about and acknowledge his.

It’s hard. It’s hard to step back and to not be the “helicopter dad” always trying to protect him or to keep him on task. I do it with the best intentions. I want to protect him. I want to help him with the challenges his condition and the side effects of his medicine bring to his life. I felt like he needed me to do those things to function in the world, but deep down I know that it’s holding him back. He needs to be able to figure it out without me because I won’t always be here. And he needs to feel like he can do it by himself and for himself so that he develops confidence and a sense of worth. He simply can’t do that if I’m always trying to do it for him.

On the way home, I asked if he wanted to pitch again and he said “absolutely.” The coaches agreed. Because where I saw anxiety and fear and failure, they saw an amazing kid do something that he had never done before with joy in his heart and a smile on his face. They didn’t expect him to do it perfectly his first time because they know that he’ll get better with experience. They just wanted him to have fun doing it. Once I got through my own baggage, I figured out that so did I.

National Walk For Epilepsy 2018

Last weekend, we participated in the Epilepsy Foundation National Walk for Epilepsy in Washington, D.C. It was so different from the first time we attended two years ago. That year, we were only a few months in to our diagnosis and had only recently gotten out of the hospital. We were physically and emotionally drained and couldn’t even complete the shorter “fun course”. While it should have been comforting, I felt overwhelmed to being surrounded by so many people supporting a cause that we knew little about and were thrust in to.

This year was a completely different experience. We knew other people at the walk. We met some online friends in person for the first time. We saw people from our local Epilepsy Foundation affiliate. And there was a sense that this really was our community of people trying to make life better for my son and other’s like him.

It was a lot for my son to take in, too. He was excited when we got there, but the more people we talked to and the more he was exposed to the energy around him, we could see him start to shut down. Right before we started the walk, he slipped in to his “wonky place.” His eyes glazed over and he tried to run away, but I help him and sat with him long enough for him to calm down. He reluctantly started the walk, and I could feel that we were teetering on the edge of a full meltdown. But a quarter of the way in, we passed the Washington Monument that he recognized from the Spider-Man: Homecoming movie. I started talking about the movie and, a few minutes later, he started engaging in the conversation and I could see the tension leave his body. By the end of the walk, he was sprinting across the finish line to officially complete our first National Walk.

 

National Walk For Epilepsy 2018

If you haven’t done either the National Walk or an event from your local Epilepsy  Foundation affiliate, I encourage you to try it. The first one might be overwhelming, but it’s important to know that there are others like you out there, and that there are people and companies that are working hard to improve the quality of life for people living with epilepsy. We are involved with the Epilepsy Foundation of Eastern Pennsylvania, so if you live in that area, you’ll know at least one family at the event, which can make it easier. But if you don’t, go to at least one event and you’ll start building those connections to other families and it can turn a sometimes isolating condition in to one of community. You are not alone.