The value of perspective

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve had an extremely hard time seeing my glass as half full. I haven’t paid much attention to the news, but have just been reading about the horrific wildfires in Australia and now feel pretty damn lucky. So far, 166 people are confirmed dead there, and the count will no doubt go higher. Most of the stories being published are a combination of heart-wrenching and horrifying, whether they be about fatally bad decisions that were made or about the many sacrifices made while trying to save others. My heart goes out to everyone who is being affected, whether in small ways or in the worst ways.

Here at home, I’ve suddenly developed seizures that lock me up – before my current drug program was started, they made me unable to speak or move voluntarily, with uncontrollable tremors. I spent a few days in the Whitehorse hospital and Cathy was off work last week watching over me. Fairly heavy doses of dilantin now control the seizures to the point that I’m more or less functional, but there’s a lot I can’t do, including driving (and that is a huge handicap given my lifestyle).

We have an awesome medical system in the Yukon but I hope to be flying to Vancouver for an EEG in the near future – a neurologist from Vancouver is seeing me here on Wednesday, and we’re just in a wait-and-see mode until then. There’s probably no cure, but the EEG may indicate a drug that stops the seizures completely and doesn’t make me fuzzy-headed.

We got a heavy dump of snow on Thursday and Friday (almost a foot) that Cathy just couldn’t deal with, and I wasn’t feeling too bad yesterday morning so together we got it all cleaned up. Unfortunately I pushed too hard, though, and had a bad afternoon and evening, starting with a seizure in the hot tub and then 5 of various intensities almost back-to-back just after my son Steve and his partner Rachel arrived for dinner. It will take a while to figure out how to deal with it all…