Good news!  I have epilepsy.

The above sentence is true – both halves of it.

Let me explain.  For the past couple of years, I have been accumulating this odd little set of symptoms.  Visual auras, reminiscent of certain fondly-remembered high school recreations.   Sudden bits of vertigo, reminiscent of the aftermath of frat parties best forgotten.  Then, on June 9, after a frenetic day at work, I was walking from my office building to the garage where I park.  I recall hoofing past a sedan that was making a y-turn . . . and waking up in the ER.   In between, I am reputed to have told strangers  my name was Richard, engaged in enough muscular activity to make me sore ever since,  “foamed at the mouth” (this sounds rather werewolfish and may not be true), took some skin off my elbow, hip and scalp (this I have the road rash to prove), took an ambulance ride (this I have the BILL to prove), had a CT scan, struggled to answer questions put to me by a grumpy ER doc, and gazed into the loving, frightened eyes of my wife.   The last part is the only bit I actually remember .  I do fuzzily recall flunking the doc’s exasperated quiz.  Once he got the CT result showing I wasn’t bleeding on the brain, he gave up trying to get any sense out of me, pronounced that I was discharged,  said “the seizure was probably idiopathic,” and wished me a pleasant evening.    If I ever have the experience again, I hope I have the presence of mind to answer “That’s idiopathic” to any question put to me by emergency personnel.

So why is this good news?  Well, I guess the good news part started yesterday, when I consulted with a super-smart neurologist who gave me an answer to the small questions niggling at the back of my mind for the past 18 months, questions that after the seizure got more persistent and disturbing than even  those of the ER doc.  It’s good news that the answer to those questions is not “it’s idiopathic.”  It’s good news that the answer is a condition, not a degenerative disease, unlikely to be fatal, likely to be manageable with meds, and one that will change, but not ruin, my life.   It’s good news that I live in a time when society offers medication for this sort of thing, instead of burning one at the stake as a heretic.   It’s good news that I love so goddamn much Beret, Paige and Marcus, my wider family, a goodly proportion of you on Facebook, and this crazy life of mine, and that if the fates allow and I behave myself, I will get to live lots more of it.

When I was a kid, my favorite fantasy activity was flying. Superman-Gigantor style.  Since I awoke in the ER that night, I have indulged the vision that my seizure was one of those Narnia-like, “leave for an instant, live a lifetime”  experiences, and that the reason my shoulder blades still hurt so much is that during my excursion, I had these enormous, hawk-like wings.