Over the last few weeks I had become increasingly excited about the very real prospects of having a future. I was of course thinking about marriage but also about finally bring able to get a job. I had managed to go 5 weeks straight without a seizure which was unheard of previously. I had just had a most magical, trouble free 2 weeks in South Africa. I had even started to feel normal again so started to look in some detail to the idea of firing up my old strategic plan that I had written for the Not for Profit, ‘The Future Nation Foundation,’ that I had helped to build. It was ready to go and seeking funding just prior to my diagnosis. I should dust it off and refresh it as fit for purpose and up to date after 3 years of gathering dust then get out there and make it happen. I was champing at the bit and desperate to get going to help our disadvantaged and disengaged vulnerable young people but was told to wait. All who knew me and knew of my desires said wait. Too early, give it time. I found this hugely frustrating and couldn’t quite understand it until now.
Over the last three days, during which I have worked hard to catch up with my emails and some administration I have suffered three creeping seizures. All followed the same pattern like the one I had on Wednesday evening in the village store. It stole my eyesight, replacing it instead with intense flickering light spots fizzing away in ever increasing density until all that could be seen were shadows. Movement could be tracked but with little detail: no colour, no faces, just shadows. Then sure enough it starts to creep up the left arm, the hive of bees working their prickly and noisy way up my arm between muscle and skin causing involuntary twitches in the hand before then firming the skin of the mouth and cheeks, making audible speech almost impossible. Forcing a necessity to concentrate deeply on the formulation and annunciation of words in order to be understood but only to be misunderstood as a simpleton. These seizures hang on and on as if they are never going to leave me and instead leave me feared as to what was to happen next. How far would this one go? I retreated to a quiet corner of the village store to avoid having to explain myself or being perceived as rude. As my knees buckled slightly I propped myself up on the ice cream counter and started to breath. Breath so hard as to try and breath it away. Concentrate on my breathing, keep calm and breath it away. Push it away. Trapped in the corner with nothing working as it should I started to wonder whether or not I should call for an ambulance. Should I call for help. Am I going to start choking like I have before? No it will go. I just have to push it away. Push it away. Push it away. ‘Can I help you?’ came the helpful call from the lady in the shop. ‘Oh No!’ was my immediate thought but then I remembered why I had come in. ‘Pugs!’ I try again. ‘Pugs!’ ‘Pugs?’ she asks looking at me sympathetically and quizzically, ‘No Pugs’ I reply holding up two fingers ‘too pen pugs!’ ‘Ohhhh two pin plugs?’ she asks. ‘Yes Peeese’ I respond. She leads me gently to the plugs. Loads of them. ‘I’ll leave you here to choose she says’ and I stand there staring at the plugs unable to read any of the information on the packet and having to judge whether a plug was two pin or four pin by the size and feel of the plug until slowly. Very very slowly my sight returned. I buy the plug with no speech necessary but manage a simple ‘tank you’ before returning to the flat.
Each seizure left me so bitterly disappointed. Each time I hadn’t eaten or drunk anything unusual so couldn’t fathom it except that over these last few days I had been working hard to catch up, get a sense of my future direction, and position myself for a launch into whatever lay ahead.
When coupled with the similar seizures I had had with Allie in Edinburgh over the weekend I was reminded about just how frail my healing was, how frail my recovery was, and each time I start to get wobbly after more than an hour in front of a computer, just how frail I still am.
As I waited for my ENT appointment at the Forth Valley Royal Hospital I was both heartened and saddened by what I witnessed. Unable to drive I arrived 50 minutes early as the only other option was to arrive 10 minutes too late, so I sat in the atrium and looked around me. In this small space of circular seating sat a blind man, a deaf man, a man with a brain tumour and a man with no legs, just two very obvious prosthetics under his shorts. I promise you that this is not the start of a joke of poor taste. Just an observation of who sat in the atrium. What was revealing and heart warming was that in that 50 minutes half a dozen people came up to the man with his prosthetics on and assuming that he was an injured serviceman wanted to shake his hand, sit and talk to him. He was a delightful man. A civilian who lost his legs to an accident and was interesting and engaging none the less. The deaf man and the blind man were both wearing veterans badges. One, the blind man, had medals on, yet not one person went over to speak to them. Unsurprisingly no one came to speak to me either. The three of us just sat there in silence long forgotten in the corner.
I don’t in any way look ill and work very hard not to let the 18 years of physical age I gained in 18 months of treatment hold me back. In fact I work hard to claw those years back rather than succumb to them, so it is no surprise that I was largely ignored in the corner. But the deaf and blind man were clearly veterans and may well have a war story to tell behind their injuries but were roundly ignored.
As I attended the service of remembrance at the 1 SCOTS Memorial in Dreghorn Barracks and reflected on my 5 friends lost in service I also reflected on that moment in the Forth Valley Royal Hospital. There are many young men and women of the Armed Forces who while not having made the ultimate sacrifice that so many have so tragically made, have in many ways have made that sacrifice as they fight for every day that they can get. They may, one day in the future but slowly, quietly, with no fan fare or ceremony just go. And when they die of their wounds sustained during their service, whether mental or physical, please remember them. There might not even be any tales of daring do that led to their wounds but stand there to fight for the freedoms we all enjoy they did. So as we remember the glorious dead please remember those still fighting. I finish with a link to this morning’s thought for the day from Radio four and given by Bishop James Jones:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04fysmj
Thank you
Yours aye
Archie