Memory Seized 12/31 #SOL2023

Memories lodge themselves inside us.

My memories arise, often unexpectedly, while others sleep. I cannot bring some to the surface, and I don’t think I have what’s called a “good memory”. My husband, on the other hand, recounts dates and places readily; he drives once to a location and returns as if the route was well travelled.

Not me. I’m often lost — directionally challenged — and some details of my life hide in the byzantine conduits of brain matter; memories silently wait until one seizes, grasping consciousness.

A vivid memory burst through the surface of the day just as I decided to start writing this post. I rose, having sufficiently cuddled the dog, and my daughter, still reclining on the sofa, began having a seizure. (This is a regular occurence in our household as she has lived most of her life with a seizure disorder.) This particular memory remains deeply etched in some visual system — I can see the hospital room in Detroit, remember the five sets of eyes turn my way filled with panic as the operating room doors swung behing me, my one year old baby girl lying on the paper-covered bed with tubes and electrodes and devices everywhere, my husband’s mouth open as I watched his body slowing buckle at the knees.

But I need to back up a bit.

We were in Detroit because Ontario did not have a PET scan for such a small body. We were in the hosptial room as we waited for the radioactive isotope to take effect. I was coming in the doors after getting a coffee and checking on my six year old son who was staying with my mother in Goderich. I entered the room just as the doctors told my husband her blood oxygen levels were dropping to a critical rate and they wouldn’t be able to complete the scan today. We had one day. We were there to stop the seizures.

If I’m being completely honest, I had been falling apart, but in that moment, I changed. I seized it and moved quickly to hold up my husband, to ask questions, to make decisions, to persuade the doctors to rush her through before the isotope degraded significantly so the scan could not be completed. Calm logic and reason dominated: “We cannot stay another day. Her blood oxygen is low because she has a cold. Can you move quickly on this and complete the scan?”

Her seizures grabbed our attention because they demanded intervention; but that didn’t stop them. Nothing stopped them. We tried the ketogenic diet, every anti-convulsant currently on the market, and each attempt felt more and more intense and futile. We were stuck, like the backspace, and the memory of that moment is too.