A Little Bit About Me

Good morning ya'll! It's a beautiful morning here in Alpine America! Not to hot and not to cool, just how I like it!

Well, I thought I would share with ya'll what I've been thinking about here lately. Roughly five years ago this month I had a doctors appointment at The Children's Hospital in Denver Colorado for my monthly check-up. I was both nervous and excited about it because they last time my doctor had told me I might be able to stop taking medication. He was a funny ol' guy, long gray beard and white hair, not your usual children's doctor. As I'm sitting on the little table he performs all the little tests on me that I was accustomed to. Everything was normal as it always has been. "Alright Miss Jaelyn, I think it's time to take you off your medication, the Epilepsy is gone," is what he told my parents and I. I was absolutely thrilled at the news. I mean what 12 year old kid wouldn't be? God really blessed me.

It all started in first grade, I will never forget the day. I was sitting in class listening to the teacher when my tongue started to get tingly, like when an arm or leg goes to sleep. (I don't know how else to describe it) I remember putting my head down on my desk as my face started to go numb. A couple seconds later my teacher saw what was happening and toke me down to the nurses office. The nurse didn't find anything wrong with me and she sent me back to class. Typical right? I didn't tell my parents either, but the next time it happened I was with my parents. So what do worried parents do? They schedule all sorts of appointments with doctors who told them to go see neurological specialists based on my systems. When we finally met the doctor who I mentioned early, he wanted to do an MRI scan and and ECG (Electrocardiogram) test. We agreed and got them done as soon as we could. When the results were in he told us that I was having seizures due to Rolandic Epilepsy.

They immediatley put me on some medication that they thought would help, but it didn't. I can remember one summer having 15-20 seizures a day. Seizures have different levels, depending on how big it is. The 15-20 I was having a day were on the littlest level, but they still scared me. I will never forget my dad telling me to pray when I would start to have a seizure. The familiar tingly feeling in my tongue warned me that one was coming, followed by my face going numb. I couldn't talk, or see, but I could still hear. Only a couple of times did I have the highest level of a seizures, the grand  mal seizure. When I first heard the term I thuoght it was the grandma seizure, because of how bad it was, the mother of all seizures. I had one 3 times, all waking up in the morning and half your body is numb. They were caused by the brain going completely asleep instead of just partially, and having to "reboot" itself.

Years went by and different medication was tried but nothing seemed to be working, until I went and did a study at the hospital in 2004. They put all these silly electrodes on my head, connected to wires and made me spend the night in the hospital. The point? They wanted me to have a seizure so they could record and study it. When they had studied it, they decided to put me on yet another type of medication. "Three pills a day for the rest of your life," is what my doctor told me. Well he was proved wrong in over a year when the epilepsy just "disappeared."

I have been seizure free for the last five years but I didn't get off that easy. About every six months I dream that I'm having a seizure and I wake up in a panic. Those dreams are no fun but there's not a whole lot I can do about it. I also get really bad headaches but by going to the chiropractor on a regular basis I can somewhat control them. I really do think that God blessed me because I later came to find out that rolandic epilepsy in other patients doesn't just disappear like mine seemed to do. The Good Lord was certainly watching out for me and I thank Him almost everyday.