Can you look
at someone and really tell what’s going from the outside? We are taught to
protect ourselves from the things that can hurt us and to treat people the way
you want to be treated. There are also things that we may never know until the
unexpected happens. In my case most people know that I have a physical
disability called Cerebral Palsy even though it’s not as noticeable as you
might think. It was more visible when I was younger because I wore braces but
it was the 80s and high socks where kind of in then so the first decade of my
life the brace was covered. But as I got older the little things got harder to
hide. Most kids at age 12 can tie their
shoes and when puberty hit learning how to shave was harder than the average
person that has perfectly good 100% use of two hands. Yes, I have two hands but
one is more mobile than the other mainly allowing it to use as a helper. As I
have grown up and learned how to work around most things that most people would
not have to.
I have mild
ADD it is mild and it is controlled by medication to help me concentrate
There are many
things that when you are forced to live with and accept, and there are things
that you have to accept but wish you did not have to. I had to learn that at a
very young age. There were lots of things that I could not do or be a part of
with all my friends because I had to work harder at them in order to succeed.
Sometimes it made it hard to have a social life because when everyone was out
having fun and finished with their school work I was still working on
assignments. I was still on the first assignment that I had started an hour ago
then they might have been done with all of their homework by then. There were
times when I had to spilt my time in half and come back so after school actives
were tough.
But very few
knew that I have a seizure disorder because it was controlled by medication and
I was able to live a pretty normal life. Then my mid 20s I started feeling hot
flashes, twitching and then getting sick after. What is going on? I’m eating
right sleeping fine working out. Then
when things started happening more frequently we had the doctor run some test and
during my EEG it came up as that I was having seizure like symptoms. I was left
with two options, play it safe and just up the dosage of the meds that I was on
or… take a risk and change my medicine completely.
There were pros
and cons that I had to think about on my way to get there. One of the big ones
was if I stayed on Depakote and I had children, they might be born with a birth
defect. With the other medication I would not have to worry about that if
it worked. I chose to take a big risk and switch my medicine. It was very scary
but worth it because now almost two years later I have been on the new medicine
and have not had any seizure like systems and there is no negative side
effect to the Kepra like the Depakote had. Yes, change can be scary but it can
also be a very good thing.
There are things
that we can control that help us but then there are things that are we
cannot. I wish that people would accept things
for what they are. However, the world is not always like that and we need to
try our best to make sure that people understand because it is not such a black
and white world as it used to be.
