Sometimes Calvin laughs in his sleep. It is simultaneously cute and unsettling. Last night was no exception.
I was having a dream about a couple I know who own a plant nursery down the road a spell. Though in real life we don’t know them well, in the dream Michael and I were cooking them dinner. It was an intimate yet somber affair. The man had just developed some sort of grave illness while the couple was struggling with how to keep their once thriving business afloat.
The woman and I sat on the couch together and she began talking about another couple that owned a similar nursery and whose only child had a disability—was retarded. Behind large glasses her eyes welled up with tears as she described compassionately how difficult she thought it must be for them—running a nursery while caring for a disabled child. She selflessly put her own stress and worry aside while radiating great tenderness and concern for the other family. I knew, by looking in her eyes, she was also relating to me her empathy toward our ongoing ordeal with Calvin, his poor development and his relentless, miserable seizures.
And then I heard Calvin laugh, or what I thought at first was a laugh, and my dream was coldly shattered into smithereens by yet another seizure. It was really no different from all the rest—upsetting—and probably upwards of three minutes followed by writhing, fists banging his skull, and the sour groan of gas creaking and bubbling in his knotted belly. Half an hour later he had another, though a shorter, partial seizure, making his telltale click-swallowing sound, his wandering eyes peering from a ghostly pale face.
Finally, as Calvin drifted off to sleep just before four o’clock, the lonely trill of a songbird echoed hollowly through the blackness of tall trees as the sky began to slowly lighten. It sang what I felt was a melancholy tune.
Please share Calvin’s story with others. Help bring us one step closer to a cure for epilepsy. It’s not hard. Just do it one story at a time.
I was having a dream about a couple I know who own a plant nursery down the road a spell. Though in real life we don’t know them well, in the dream Michael and I were cooking them dinner. It was an intimate yet somber affair. The man had just developed some sort of grave illness while the couple was struggling with how to keep their once thriving business afloat.
The woman and I sat on the couch together and she began talking about another couple that owned a similar nursery and whose only child had a disability—was retarded. Behind large glasses her eyes welled up with tears as she described compassionately how difficult she thought it must be for them—running a nursery while caring for a disabled child. She selflessly put her own stress and worry aside while radiating great tenderness and concern for the other family. I knew, by looking in her eyes, she was also relating to me her empathy toward our ongoing ordeal with Calvin, his poor development and his relentless, miserable seizures.
And then I heard Calvin laugh, or what I thought at first was a laugh, and my dream was coldly shattered into smithereens by yet another seizure. It was really no different from all the rest—upsetting—and probably upwards of three minutes followed by writhing, fists banging his skull, and the sour groan of gas creaking and bubbling in his knotted belly. Half an hour later he had another, though a shorter, partial seizure, making his telltale click-swallowing sound, his wandering eyes peering from a ghostly pale face.
Finally, as Calvin drifted off to sleep just before four o’clock, the lonely trill of a songbird echoed hollowly through the blackness of tall trees as the sky began to slowly lighten. It sang what I felt was a melancholy tune.
Please share Calvin’s story with others. Help bring us one step closer to a cure for epilepsy. It’s not hard. Just do it one story at a time.
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| detail of The Irish Famine by by George Frederick Watts |
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