tHERsDay: Life With Epilepsy

It's like constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Waiting. Always waiting.  Like Wednesday, when she had her Meningitis vaccine and I knew that a seizure would come because they always do after an inoculation.  Waiting all night, going to bed late, sleeping lightly, but nothing came.  So, I thought we were out of the woods by Thursday -

but then the shoe dropped.

It was an uncharacteristic daytime seizure which caught me off guard.  I was alerted by her bed shaking madly above my head.  Leaping two and three steps at a time I found her done with the major convulsions and sitting up disoriented, pupils eclipsing the entirety of her blue irises.

And I saw it, clear as day.
Fear.
On her face was pure, heartbreaking fear - she was petrified and lost.

So, I comforted with the standard string of lies spoken to an agitated, scared, non-verbal little girl who doesn't enjoy being touched or comforted -   "It will be okay, it will be okay, it's okay." Yet, I didn't believe these words myself, or at least not fully, so I instead spoke the only truth I know: "Mommy's here, I'm here, I'm here."  

Somehow she found comfort in this because she was able to settle and her body went quiet and slack.
So, I filled my promise and sat by her bedside, watching her eyelids slowly drop, ushering her into recuperative sleep. Her head rested in the palm of my hand, so I found comfort too.