Today makes two weeks since #1s last seizure. That hasn’t happened since November. She had such a great weekend! For the first time in months I am seeing my bright, sunny, and beautiful girl again. She’s been so depressed and funky, but that’s to be expected. Her whole body has hurt pretty much constantly for the last few months. Because of the seizures, her leg muscles have been incredibly tight (although I really expect they are spasms that won’t go away). Also, she developed TMJ-type symptoms and because of the constant pain in the jaw hasn’t been able to eat regularly or even talk at some points. My poor girl, I am so very grateful to God that she is slowly acting her normal self. LOL – as a matter of fact, she was acting SO NORMAL that she was working my last nerve with the incessant talking, but I have missed it so much that I listened anyway. Even when she got uber-excited and called me “Dude!” instead of mom.
#1's right parietal lobe is where her seizure activity originates from. The docs’ best guess is that she suffered either a stroke or aneurism during development when I was pregnant. The entire lobe is smaller than the others and has a definite lack of blood flow. There are several smaller “spots” of damage on her other lobes, but the worst of it is the right parietal lobe. I know that God is truly a God of miracles, because after seeing so many specialists and having so many tests and results, with the extent of the brain damage they tell us she has, she shouldn’t even be functional. But she is bright and beautiful – a GT/Honors student, very involved in school and church and all-in-all a great kid.
Off-topic weight issues -- my wonderful hubs is a good man (he’d have to be to marry us four women). He is wonderfully supportive and loves me no matter what. He does, however, suffer from foot-in-mouth disease to some extent. I had a gastric bypass over two years ago and a body lift about 7 months ago. In all, I have lost over 200 pounds. He was uploading some before/after pictures to our laptop for me and I was laying in bed reading. Out of the blue, he pops out with, “You know, you were much thinner in these pictures.” Much thinner, by the way, is only about 10 pounds. My lowest weight was about 154 right after the body lift. My current weight is 165, give or take a couple of pounds fluctuation. So when he said that, my first instinct was to get defensive. My inner voice was all, “So what? I’m too fat for you now? I don’t look good? 200 pounds gone isn’t enough?” Being the masochist that I am, what I actually said was, “Do you think I looked better then?” And his answer was yes. So again, the masochist in me stepped right up and said, “Do you prefer my body like that over this?” And again, he pulled his foot out long enough to say yes. To be very honest, I did ask him a couple of years ago to say something if I ever began to gain weight – to help hold me accountable so that I don’t become the fat girl again. But a stable weight of 165 for the last 6 or 7 months as opposed to a steady gain is okay in my mind. If anything—he’s honest to a fault, though.
I will admit that my feelings were incredibly hurt. As a former fat girl, my weight has always been an utterly taboo subject. It was always a major focus of my ex-husband, who used to degrade me emotionally pretty regularly. At nearly 350 pounds, I thought my weight preceded me everywhere. I felt like I was always the focus of attention, and not in a good way, but because I was always the largest woman in the room. My self-esteem and self-worth was totally destroyed for the longest time, but I’ve begun to heal. However, at 165 pounds, I still carry that 350 pound woman in my mind – she lives in my mirror and won’t leave me alone. Because of that, innocent comments such as my wonderful hubs, who truly didn’t mean anything negative by it, get blown all out of proportion. Even now, 2 days later, I’m still pondering and worrying it to death.
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