So, I’ve gotten a bit off track from sharing my story as I originally intended when I began writing this blog.  But then again, have I?  I may have “jumped the fence” to the present day but I believe that today is part of my story.  I promise I’ll get back to the place after “The Lull” to pick up where that left off.  But for now, my present day is offering me so many lessons and experiences, that I feel compelled to stick with sharing how this new place I’ve been wandering around in is helping me discover a new kind of silence amid a new kind of noise.

            At last report the number of seizures I’ve had since the last medication trial was six.  I’m up to 12 now.   In the past four days, four seizures.  The strongest was at the pharmacy counter in Target while picking up my new medication, Vimpat.  That one was a doozey…  I had a couple of stressful days which I’m sure helped bring it on.  The culprits of stress?  1) My external hard drive stopped working – the place where all my writing and photography is stored…  I fell prey to a very anxious worry I’ve lost a lot of work for this blog and the images I’ve captured.  Right now the drive is at the “Computer Hospital” being evaluated for a full data recovery.  Please, please, please let it be so….  2)  How am I going to pay for my new medication?  $630 for 60 pills – really?  Without prescription drug coverage, I was terrified at the thought of what I was going to do.  I give great praise to “Team Cheryl” at my neurology clinic for banding together to find a way to get me a supply of the medication with a free 2 week trial from the manufacturer.  This provides a great window into making sure I can tolerate it, so far so good.  Then Team Cheryl put their know how into action and expedited an application to help me obtain the medication directly from the manufacturer at no cost to me.  Whew….  Thank God.  3) Experiencing so many seizures!  Strangely, I’m kind of getting to understand them.  I know when one’s coming on and I know there’s nothing I can do about it.  I’ve learned to simply embrace them.   The most difficult part is on those who are around me when I have one.  It must be really scary for them. 

            So, speaking of embracing the seizures, I came upon an amazing TED talk given by Phil Hansen titled “Embrace the Shake”.  From YouTube comes the following description of his talk.  “In art school, Phil Hansen developed an unruly tremor in his hand that kept him from creating the pointillist drawings he loved. Hansen was devastated, floating without a sense of purpose. Until a neurologist made a simple suggestion: embrace this limitation … and transcend it.” 

            What I love about Phil’s presentation is how he shares his amazing embrace of his situation with very insightful and inspiring ways of describing how he found ways to take what ability he still has to a whole new level of creativity.  He discovered how he could use his remaining abilities to create a whole new way of sharing his passion for art with the world.  He discovered a “whole different approach to his art that completely changed his artistic horizon”.  He went from a singular way of creating his art to expanding into many ways of creating by finding that “embracing limitation can actually drive creativity”.   I found this fascinating and I learned something from Phil; that it’s not what one loses or is limited by that means anything at all.  It is what that limitation can do to drive one’s ability to create unlimited possibility.  It’s what embracing the shake can do for you.  Here’s Phil’s TED Talk, I hope you enjoy it, I think you will.