Not long after I closed my eyes again, my son's seizure scream cracked the silence. Despite the stormy weather, I hadn't really seen the seizure coming; it was day forty-five in a seizure-free stint, one of his longest in years.
After nearly two minutes, when the grand mal was over, I dripped two milliliters of my homemade THCA cannabis oil into the side of Calvin mouth in an effort to stave off a subsequent attack. Then I crawled into the small space next to my boy-man whose soft childlike cheeks are now regularly peppered with stubble. I held him close so I could monitor his breathing; SUDEP—Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy—is a menace for young people like Calvin who have intractable epilepsy, and is thought to occur because of disruptions in cardiac and/or respiratory activity in the wake of grand mal seizures.
Regrettably, this morning Calvin suffered a repeat of yesterday's 2:00 a.m. seizure, but this time the extra cannabis oil I gave him did not thwart an ensuing one. I wish I had thought to give him an emergency dose of nasal Valium, but in my sleepy stupor it slipped my mind until the seizure was already over, when I was loathe to give it. But during his third grand mal in just over twenty-four hours, I gave him the nasal Valium to stop the cluster from evolving further.
Today, my sweet boy is a bit better than yesterday. I still don't know what caused the cluster after forty-five days of seizure freedom. Was it the storm and its low barometric pressure? Does he have an underlying illness? Was it the sucrulose (which I hadn't initially noticed) in the different brand of Greek yogurt I gave him? Is it that his body is habituating to the newest epilepsy medication, Xcopri? I will likely never know. I'll just sit here and hope, at least for now, that he doesn't have any more.
Seizures after a period of quiet ( Calvin’s 45 days) seem even harder for me, just when I think they won’t return… I am sorry Christy. I hope he gets at least 46 days this next go round.
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