Margot
By Madeline Curtis, age 14, Margot’s sister
I
wish there was a cure. The pills are supposed to work, and maybe they
do—on other people. But they don’t work on Margot. The diet didn’t work,
either. The fancy diet, the one that led to so much stress in our
house, didn’t work. The seizures just keep coming back, and my little
sister, eight years old, has to endure them. I wish there was a cure so
that Margot, who can’t even speak or walk, wouldn’t have to struggle so
much. I wish there was a cure, because I’m tired of all the new
medicines that show up in the cabinet above the sink. I wish there was a
cure, because I hate the helplessness I feel, watching her limbs freeze
and her eyes roll up into her head. I wish there was a cure, because I
want all of the people who carry the burden of epilepsy to feel relief.
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| Margot |
Lisbeth
By Martha Miller, Lisbeth’s mom
Write about lost love, my professor says. All I can think of is Lisbeth, and how I lost the little girl she was that day in sparkling summer. She'd been ill and was feeling better, then awoke that morning saying, “Mommy I don't feel good.” I laid her on the couch and gave her some Tylenol. Twenty minutes later it happened: she was grey, her eyes rolled back, the whites of them now yellow, moist, a faint clicking in her throat. Her body was stiff, jittery. I yelled to my husband Garry to come. “Call 911,” he said, and somehow I did. Waiting on the front steps for the ambulance the word EPILEPSY kept playing in my head. The ambulance arrived and the men carried her out. Garry rode with her. I followed in our car praying, “Oh God, please, this is not how I want her to grow up." In the emergency room Lisbeth laid on the stretcher. They'd cut her pink summer shorts in half, shoved tubes down her throat. Garry leaned over her tiny body, her perfect pink six year old body, her blue eyes, now shut. What (the Hell) was happening? I wanted to turn and run away. Garry saw it in my face and said gently, “C'mon Mart.” I walked to the cot where she lay, and I began to sing to her. I sang all the lullabies I'd sung to her when she was a baby. I knew what my job was now.
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| Lisbeth |
Calvin
By Christy Shake, Calvin’s mom
Our nightmare started when Calvin was eighteen months old. He had spiked a fever, so we gave him some acetaminophen and called our local hospital. The doctor assured us that we had nothing to worry about even though I’d told him Calvin had serious neurological deficits. Within mere minutes of hanging up the phone Calvin suddenly cracked like a whip into an arch stiff as a steel rod. His eyes bulged and his lips pursed as if drawn up with thread. My husband Michael gathered him up, instinctively—worriedly—rocking him back and forth as if to jostle the seizure out while I white-knuckle-called for an ambulance. “My son is having a seizure,” I blurted, “he’s not breathing—he’s turning blue!” The walls began closing in on me. Sounds morphed and muffled. Everything around me looked hazy—blurred—as if in a cloud, except for my boy who remained in sharp focus. Cradled in Michael’s arms, now jerking rhythmically—violently—Calvin turned ashen like a corpse and his eyes rolled back into his head. Time stood still as in a dream. I wasn’t sure if Calvin was alive even though his convulsions persisted—I couldn’t find a pulse.
My next memory is of the cold hard edges in the ambulance, the sterile, sickeningly gray vinyl benches. My tiny child lay in the center of a sheeted white gurney—his eyes now vacant and still—staring up in a catatonic gaze at the bluish light in the ceiling. I feared he might remain that way forever because of the seizure, or worse—die. Little did I know then that some kids do.
By Christy Shake, Calvin’s mom
Our nightmare started when Calvin was eighteen months old. He had spiked a fever, so we gave him some acetaminophen and called our local hospital. The doctor assured us that we had nothing to worry about even though I’d told him Calvin had serious neurological deficits. Within mere minutes of hanging up the phone Calvin suddenly cracked like a whip into an arch stiff as a steel rod. His eyes bulged and his lips pursed as if drawn up with thread. My husband Michael gathered him up, instinctively—worriedly—rocking him back and forth as if to jostle the seizure out while I white-knuckle-called for an ambulance. “My son is having a seizure,” I blurted, “he’s not breathing—he’s turning blue!” The walls began closing in on me. Sounds morphed and muffled. Everything around me looked hazy—blurred—as if in a cloud, except for my boy who remained in sharp focus. Cradled in Michael’s arms, now jerking rhythmically—violently—Calvin turned ashen like a corpse and his eyes rolled back into his head. Time stood still as in a dream. I wasn’t sure if Calvin was alive even though his convulsions persisted—I couldn’t find a pulse.
My next memory is of the cold hard edges in the ambulance, the sterile, sickeningly gray vinyl benches. My tiny child lay in the center of a sheeted white gurney—his eyes now vacant and still—staring up in a catatonic gaze at the bluish light in the ceiling. I feared he might remain that way forever because of the seizure, or worse—die. Little did I know then that some kids do.
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| Calvin |
Margot, Lisbeth and Calvin are just three of as many as three million Americans, and their families, who suffer from epilepsy, and who likely will not be released from their misery until a cure is discovered.
During this brief campaign please, show your compassion and donate to CURE epilepsy research at: http://www.calvinscure.com
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