The Epileptic Walz

Fall, 1998: the sister says, "she's turning around again." The four year olds were always dancing around, but one of them had a bit of a thing for rotating counterclockwise. It took three or four comments before we paid attention. Yes, she was turning around again. And couldn't be stopped. It wasn't long before she was turning around again, and then falling down.

Fall, 1999: I'm on the phone to the doctor, asking for help. She has to take 15ccs of cherry flavoured Valproic acid every morning, and she hates it. She holds it in her mouth for up to two hours after I wrestle her down and squirt it in. She will have a life-long aversion to cherry flavours. The doctor offers no help at all; in fact, the doctor practically encourages me to beat her into taking it. I wonder if I should call child protection on the doctor. For the next five years, I will repeatedly abuse her, trying to make her take her drugs. I cry alot afterwards.

Winter 2002: the medicine cabinet is getting pretty bare. She is on her fifth or 6th medication. Most of them helped for 6 months or so. They mess her up. She tells the school that she wants to kill herself, and then proves it by ramming her head into the wall. They call in the Child Psychologist, and he tells us that we are bad parents. They test her. In Grade 4, she is functioning in math and reading at a grade 1 level.

Summer, 2004. They take her off all meds, deliberately, to induce a seizure they can track on their devices. She doesn't actually have a seizure for the longest time, we have to bring in clowns and hoopla, then finally she does, and they get their data. On the way home, we stop at the video store to pick up a movie. She has a major seizure in the store, I am holding her on the floor right in front of the in-door while patrons walk by. She is thrashing around, loses bladder control. People look at us with disgust. I am unspeakably angry, I want to hit people, really badly. This was the worst moment ever, I think, I thought at the time, as I mopped up the piss with paper towels from my car, as the clerks and patrons looked on. Not one offered any sympathy or concern, let alone help. I am so tired of apologizing to people for the inconvenience my daughter causes them.

Fall, 2004. I am sitting in a sun-light filled room in a hospital. It is at the end of a corridor of rooms full of old and sick people. Some of them are dying. Five floors below, and two sections across, they have cut open her head, and are removing a piece of her brain about the size of a quarter. My wife is very tense and very beautiful, the sunlight almost gives her an aura. I have a deep sickness in my stomache, that I ignore. We sit there for some hours. It is a part of my life that I do not like to recall.

Fall, 2005. I am meeting, yet again, with the Principal, and the vice and the psychologist and the guidance counsellor and so on. I have done this more often than they have, frankly, and am better at it now. She has hit another girl in the mouth, with a trombone. The child is a child of a cop engaged in a bitter divorce and very inclined to complain, so Actions are taken. She is identified as a problem, a violent child. She is sent to a special school, and then a special class. Three years later, by the end of Grade 9, she actually ahead of grade level. This is the best thing that has ever happened to her, short of having a chunk of her brain taken out. Her teacher, Mr. Tim Robertson, possibly the most compassionate dedicated person I have ever met, basically saved my daughter's life, and I owe him a debt that I can never ever pay. She never has another seizure until

Christmas, 2007. She is sick, she is excited, the light is glaring in at her over the door, she has the first seizure in two years. It has been a trying trip, the doctors wrote it off.

Feburary 27th, 2009. I am driving. I get a call on my cell phone. "Mr.Bray, your daughter had a seizure in class, we have put her on an ambulance to the Children's Hospital." She was not sick, was not excited, was not subjected to glaring light. She just turned around and fell down. Thank god that the teacher knew what she was doing, and was right there. They would not let her twin sister approach her as they walked her out of the school. Her sister was crying and screaming and trying to get close to her; they restrained her. When I showed up at the school to take her to the hospital, the Principal shook my hand, nervously. Maybe he sensed how angry I was.

(This message has been approved by Beth. Oh, and art by her.)