Now do reach even to the brow above my eye,
Yea, tho' the striped hairs of my youth retreat before this advance,
Still the torment of my puppyhood returns upon the gray matter of my brain.
What figures shall I use to tell you of this catastrophe?
What form and coat does it assume?
Nay, even the cat is not a visitor so fearsome as this.
For it is a force of oblivion that seizes upon me,
Like a boulder dropped of a sudden upon the entrance to a den,
Sealing out even the sliveriest sliver of light from its residents within.
It is a seizure that makes oblivious all that is frida,
Seizing the pathways of the messengers called Synapses
Who would carry the orders of orderliness throughout this organism.
And bereft of their messages the muscles of these limbs
Know no order and do act and contract in calamity
Neither walking nor making any motion that is useful,
And the eyes of this head stare with a bold staring
That sees no thing, fixing it not upon the tablet of my brain.
O my companion, how do we banish this my greatest tormenter?
How build round about the quiet organismation of frida
A wall of sturdy unbreachableness that shall hold off the oblivion
And keep the movement of these muscles
And, yea, also the perceptions of these senses in useful accord?
Nay, this fearsome horde of Nothing
It neither flees before the resounding bark of my voice box
Nor does it cower beneath the solemn command of yours.
Behold, the truest arrow in our quiver,
The butter from peanuts called "pill."
This we shall whet and nock afresh
And let fly against the thief in my night.
Exegesis and Commentary
So just about the same time, last fall, that we were trying to figure out why Nadja couldn't walk anymore, Frida also began having seizures again after a good five-year hiatus. This isn't unusual, since as effective as her medication--phenobarbitol--was, it is also something the nervous system adapts to very well over time. Adapts to so well that at some point the seizure disorder will typically reemerge.
So it did with Frida, always coming in the wee hours of the night and coming out a bit differently than the standard grand mal seizures of her youth. She seemed to stay in the seizure longer, passing from the usual paddling limbs and snapping jaw to a kind of frozen staring that lasted far too long. She also seems now more prone to cluster seizures: two or more in a short time frame.
In the past, vets have said that if the seizures are less frequent than once a month, that's pretty good, but seizures like this even once every couple of months are pretty devastating, since it can be hard to tell if she's going to come back from it. A new medication added to her phenobarb seems to help--now it's maybe about seven to nine weeks between episodes--and we have a supply of vallium on hand that seems to break the seizure's hold on her, but it's pretty challenging, for her and for us.
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