I Choose Life

Day 2

June 20th, 2017

My head still hurts—not like it did on Sunday, but the headache is still there. My phone rings, and I see Dr. White’s name on my Caller ID.

“Hello, Dr. White.”

“I hear that you had a seizure. What happened?”

“I woke up in the middle of the night and thought, I should go take my medicine because I am going to have a bad headache tomorrow, but I was so tired—to tired to move.”

“Mike woke me up later, with my medicine in his hand though, and made me take it when I had a tonic clonic seizure in bed. He had to give me a shot because he said that it lasted so long.”

“I think that you need to increase your medication, your Topirimate.”

“Yes, I agree, I have already started to take two at night. Let’s see how that works. And I will cut out all alcohol.”

“Alchohol?!”

“Yes. I promise to cut out the alchohol.”

That is not exactly how my conversation went with my neurologist. I cannot remember it word for word. But I know that he sounded shocked by the fact that I had been drinking alcohol. Years earlier, I had asked him if it was O.K. to have an occasional glass of wine, and from the epilepsy website, I found the permission to have two glasses a day if I was so inclined, and during the summer or on a weekend why not, I would frequently ask myself. And how could I go to Casa Don Gallos and not have a frozen margarita with my chips and queso? It just seems wrong somehow, like I would be upsetting the order of operation of things. I know silly, right? Right now, it would be crazier for me to choose the Margarita over, oh, I don’t know, um, I guess what I am working for right now is . . . life. So, I choose life.

I begin to massage my neck with my hands slowly working up towards my head, digging deeper into my neck as I worked my way up . . . mama like.