My mom was given six months to live in January, 2012, diagnosed with moderate brain atrophy and frontotemporal degeneration (FTD). In September 2017, since she was still trucking but she could no longer speak, walk or perform tasks independently ALL WHILE BEING FULLY AWARE OF ALL THIS #mostcruelillness, she required very individualized care which facilities […]
Author: BrainWars
š¤
Someone Never Stopped Coming Home
While it was still just David, Hemi Monster and I, our house, the first and only house for which we made mortgage payments, still felt busy. Even when any of us were by ourselves, we were never truly alone. That can be comforting and it can also be terrifying. On one afternoon, it was more […]
What David Saw
So we bought a haunted house in Madison, Wisconsin. A wise financial decision. Yet, throughout the four and a half years we lived there, I never saw anything. I heard things and I felt things but I never saw anything. At the same time, around the time we bought the house, my dad was about […]
Our First House Came With a Haunted Mirror We Didn’t Want
In late September 2014, David and I bought our first house. Since we had very little money and were also looking for “character,” we had been house-hunting for quite awhile. Yet, we had an amazing realtor who specialized in “hard cases” and she got us in to view a lovely old house on the very […]
Mom and That Same Someone Behind Me
While exploring the “Upstairs Lair of the Boogeyman” as a kid, I almost died of fright when I heard a floorboard creak behind me, but found no one there when I finally turned to face them. But it spooked me and ignited my belief that something unseen stands behind me. My beautiful mom was diagnosed […]
Ouija Boards Pieces, Music Boxes and Other Shit That Shouldn’t Move On Its Own But Does Anyways
So I owned a Ouija board as a kid. My grade school friends and I would play it during sleepovers. We named it Reinhold because that’s what it said its name was. That was likely the most significant thing that happened with that board as I don’t think my friend and I were too familiar […]
Is This Chemical Or Am I Authentically Feeling This Calm/Honest
Meds. ššššššššššššššššš A few weeks ago I did a DIY, 72 hour EEG which revealed that I was experiencing an impressive number of seizures though I had no idea of this. But that could be just another seizure. My current neurologist believes that a lot of the actions I take are due to “seizures”. Not […]
Don’t Move Into a Haunted House
I’ve been told that epileptics are prone to paranormal activity but I’d say most people are fair game if you move into a place with black handprints up and down the basement wall a la Blair Witch. My husband, our mastiff rescue Hemingway and I moved to Pittsburgh last year to fail at starting a […]
“Well, I’ll Just Stop Eating Then…”
Super share. I can’t speak for anyone else but myself… but since my teenage anorexia was an indirect product of my teenage epilepsy, I’m going to super share. š Eating disorders are largely a manifestation of feeling the fuck out of control. āMy life is spiraling out of control and Iām also 16 soā¦ yes, […]
Maybe Zoo Animals Don’t Want Stay At Home Order To Ever End
Watching the news right now is terrifying. And itās been terrifying forā¦ years. But itās especially terrifying right now. And they say we are all in this together butā¦ no matter how many “feel good” stories the local news plays, it’s really difficult to feel good about humankind when watching the news. Yeah, I watched […]
Witnessing Tonic-Clonic, Formerly Known as Grand Mal, Seizures
There is nothing a parent can really do to stop it or make it better while a grand mal/tonic-clonic seizure is happening. But there has been progress.
The Moths Are Mobilizing
In addition to the armed people who are trying to intimidate? state governments into opening everything by gathering in protest crowds near state capitols… because… they don’t “believe in” the coronavirus, science, hard data, global news reporting, or how New York City officials are digging mass graves… the tenuous relationship between this apartment’s moths and […]
Lacking the Energy to Rhyme
UGH. Did anyone else wake up just feeling zapped today? As in… extra zapped? I stayed up “late” (I’m old so “late” is now really not that late at all) watching the Phantom of the Opera 25th Anniversary show on YouTube as it was somehow recommended to me and oh my cats I will never […]
Being Thirteen and WTF Are Temporal Lobe Seizures?
I attended a free private Lutheran school from kindergarten through 8th grade. For 9th grade all us St. Johns kids had to transfer schools because the grades in our school ran out. Some of my good friends left for junior high after 6th grade and were really happy to be “liberated” but I was content […]
Angry Bunnies Drowning
I fell into a pit of ambivalence last night. Join the club, yeah. I know. Maybe it’s the social isolation but I really can’t imagine that’s it because I rarely leave the house so not much in my daily empath life has changed and… I stopped watching the news. So why the sudden Pit of […]
Yahtzee! Finding Medication That Doesn’t Make It Worse
Society has not been kind to epileptics. Society is often a psychotic bully so it’s no surprise. In earlier times, epileptics were worshipped/feared because people thought the seizures were due to gods speaking through a human and, being human, all a human could do was seize in response. But gods didn’t want to talk to […]
Ambulatory EEG Test #1 Result Day… I Am More Epileptic++ Than I Realized
Yesterday afternoon, my neurologist’s office called to tell me they downloaded the data from my first ambulatory EEG and, consequently, my neurologist wanted to see me ASAP. ASAP? Right away? Pronto? Okay. All right. Here we go. Okay. My heart dropped to the bottom of my guts. It’s not great when a medical professional calls […]
Ambulatory EEG #1: Getting Creative with Quarantine Activities
My hellish week of doing an ambulatory DIY EEG at home during the coronavirus quarantine
ORIGINS
My unnatural development of self (“growing up”) was quite an ugly little process and it wasnāt especially smooth or quick. For example, by the time I became a high school senior I was probably equivalent to Stage IV-A[1] of Seth Brundle/Jeff Goldblumās transformation in The Fly. But, just like Seth Brundle, I eventually figured it […]
Thirty-Eight Resolutions From the Past
When I was trying to finish my doctorate, I often found I couldn’t. Thus, since resolutions are useless, I decided to come up with some because useless things are my specialty, and as usual I couldn’t write about the things I was supposed to be writing about. But I could of course write to complain […]
Brain Wars!!! 