My one year anniversary!

I find it hard to believe that it has been exactly one year since my last seizure. It's crazy how time flies. I am too emotional to write anything meaningful, but I'll be back. I really want to scream out loud. I want to spend my evening giving praise to God. I'm looking back with gratitude to God and looking forward with hope!

Be back soon!

My tremendous three!

This morning, I just got up, got dressed and left home. Didn't really have a destination in mind. I had to just leave home. I spend so many hours with my son and while I love the little munchkin and the time we spend together, I still need some alone time.
Anyway, I end up doing some Christmas shopping. I had lunch and decided to write out the things I hoped for in 2015. This is something I've done every year for 6 years. I don't know why, but I didn't do it last year. I like the exercise because it allows me review the year at the end of it and see the things I should be thankful for. And it's also a good way to watch as my priorities change with time.

I've drawn up a 3 page list (it's a small notebook! ) and I'm excited for next year! I start to think of my friends. I have tons of people in my life. What do you expect? I went to 3 high schools and I was pretty popular. I went to an awesome university and I definitely wasn't a wallpaper. I have been around a lot and wherever I go, I add on names to my friend list. I'm going to use friend here to signify people who I am happy to know. People who I can pick up my phone and have a good chat with. People who I would invite to parties, hang out with etc. This list is pretty long.

I'm here, scribbling the names of people who are my friends and it's funny that there are only 3 people who really know me. These people know the worst things about me. One of them, has experienced a lot with me. You really don't want to be a shared enemy, because we will destroy you. Lol.

These wonderful ladies are awesome because we fool around, make fun of ourselves and of people and we support each other with everything. The fun part is we are not a group of friends. I'm the common denominator. They know of each other but don't have a relationship of any kind. I think that's why it works. Group dynamics are way too complex. I've been there, trust me. And we pray together and for each other. That's a beautiful thing.

And I love how we all have different strengths. One of them is my voice of reason. If I go to her to confess something horrible I did, she will laugh at the ridiculousness with me. She will tease me, but she will always tell me the truth. She will tell me I've screwed and she will guide me towards fixing it. I admire that. She tells me what I need to hear, but she listens to my crazy rants. I love her with all my heart.

Then number two is awesome because she is many things to me. She is like an older sister. You should hear how she scolds me. I love her mum with all my heart and she will forever be special to me. Her mum taught me faith and held me in her heart and prayers through loss and sickness. That happened because my friend wore my grief. She is constantly praying for me and my family. We share each other's high's and low's. We have cried through loss, rejoiced at good news, laughed at our helplessness in certain situations. When I'm being silly, I hear her voice in my head and it causes me to rethink. We skipped being birthday mates by hours! Even though she is brutally honest with me, I love her and how principled she is. I love her kids with all my heart and she loves my son with all her heart. If anything ever happened to me, I know she will be there always for my son. She's the most loyal person I know. I'm privileged to have her as a friend. Why am I tearing up? Ok... ok... you get the gist.

Then number three. We are thick as thieves.  Our friendship started off like lightening. Like two naked wires sparking off. And just as it started, it dulled. I have no recollection of the events that dulled it, but yeah a couple of years passed and we lived our separate lives. One day, we started again. It was awesome and she made me see why I loved her in the first place. We have secrets and we have history and we have a gazillion memories. I love how we have grown together. We still have our crazy, but we are adults, moms, wives. We support each other, we are the two heads that are always better than one. We gently nudge each other in the right direction. Together, we have no shame. All there is, is love and understanding. She's the one friend I have who can literally swap lives with me. We instinctively have the same reactions to many things. When I hear her say some things,  I laugh cos it's like listening to myself. We have the same loves and the same vices. I love it!

As 2014 wraps up, I raise my glass to these beautiful women who have added color and value to my life. I love them and I thank God that I am privileged to call them friends. I hope that I can be half the friend to them as they are to me. I don't know if this last line makes sense but I'm out of here!

I wish I could Write

I wish I could write. There is too much going on in my big fat head. I lie in bed some nights thinking, tossing and turning, unable to sleep. Sometimes, I drift in and out. Not fully awake but not fully asleep. Somewhere in between. Then I start to think. I start to create scenarios. What if I had made xxx choices at xxx times, where would I be now? Is there really anything like destiny? Why did God give me free will?

I think about my bad choices. Why did I kiss that guy I met at Chocolate Royal cafe? It wasn't as though I liked him. I just did. He wanted me to kiss him, so I did. This thought leads to several other thoughts that lead to the revelation: I have kissed a lot of people I never really liked! I have smiled a lot of fake smiles. I have said so many "sorry's" I didn't mean. I have said, "I'll miss you" when in my head, I'm saying, "get the hell outta my face". I have even cried when in my heart I didn't feel a thing. What kind of person does this make me? I honestly wish I cared.

It's weird cos sometimes I am concerned about how people feel, so I watch what I say to them and how I say it. Other times, I don't give a rat's ass! Sometimes, I am patient and kind and considerate. Sometimes, I am cold, unfeeling, mean. I can count how many people I love. I love them differently and with different parts of my heart. I don't know if they all love me back. I don't love people because I want them to love me back. I love them because I love them. Just because. The people I love can hurt me. They are the only ones whose stabs can kill me. That's why I don't love everybody. I don't want to die young.

Destiny. I can't say I know what that means. Is it my destiny to be a mom to Lucas and a wife to Nathan? I don't know. If I hadn't come to Canada to school, where would I have met Nathan? If I left Canada in 2012 how would we have Lucas? If I had married that Igbo guy who wanted to take me to "Spen" what kind of life would I have now? When it comes to destiny, I don't know. One thing I do know, is that we have the freedom to make choices. Those choices have consequences and it is those consequences that we live out everyday. But then, shit happens. You make choices, you do your best, but sometimes, shit just happens!

If I could write, I would write pages and pages of shit. Bad shit, beautiful shit. Just shit that goes on in my head. The shit I think about when people around me are talking shit.

Oh well... I'm out!

Once upon a time...

Last night, I was going through my son's closet and suddenly became overwhelmed with emotion. You see, about a year and half ago I had a miscarriage. It is probably one of the most horrible experiences of my life. It felt like I had locked up my dreams in a glass globe and someone just picked it up and smashed it! I had been married for 3 months when we found out. Words will never express our excitement. We started dreaming, planning...

I did everything and more. Folic acid, hospital visits, veggie shakes, I even joined a pre-natal class! I'd be walking down the street, and my mind will be so far away. I constantly seemed to be dreaming. Dreaming of the miracle growing inside me. Of how much love we would shower on this child. There was no need to think of names, we already had name options. We started dreaming of what part of Toronto we wanted to move to. We lived in this really tiny apartment and there was no way we could bring a third person in.

Then, I went for my first scan and it all went downhill from there. I cannot write down everything I felt. To do so feels to me like giving up the only keepsake I have from that dream. My head felt heavy. I felt sick to my stomach. I felt so much inside but most of all, I felt numb. I just wanted to crawl into a hole and stay there. I could not cry. If a truck hit me at that moment, I probably wouldn't have felt it. I turned to my husband and I wanted to kick him so hard. He wasn't crying. How could he not be crying?  The whole ride home, we sat in silence. He held my hand.

I crawled into my bed and that was when I cried. As I cried, I kept asking myself what I did or didn't do.  I had recently written a story about a couple who lost their baby. Immediately, I cursed at myself for writing that. I hated myself for always writing morbid stories. If only that story had been a happy one, maybe my child wouldn't have left in anger. Or maybe it was because I attended a funeral. Why did I look at death when I had life growing in me? So many crazy thoughts crossed my mind. I blamed myself over and over again. Then people started calling me. That was another horrible experience. People think I am strong. And sometimes, I feel like I have to not disappoint them. So I went through the motions. Pretending like all was well. Pretending like I had accepted it all. And they believed me. Every single one of them.

My husband slowly started to express his own emotions. The one line he said that stuck with me was, "all of a sudden, everywhere I turn, I see babies. I think my greatest emotion is disappointment." It was when I knew that he also suffered inside that I forgave him. I don't think I can say we grieved together. But we stood together through each others grief. I bled for 6 weeks. Every time I looked at my blood, my heart broke all over again.

My son, Kandu, is a beautiful boy and such a delight. I still look at him and wonder if this is all a dream. I cannot imagine my life without him. However, I will never forget the one that got away.

I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired!

Living in a developed country has a billion perks and maybe a thousand downsides. I don't care to go into details of pros and cons. Just want to talk about the way we walk on eggshells here. I appreciate a lot of the courtesies, and I have learnt to speak more conservatively and respectfully.

In my home country, people call people fat. They use words like retard and imbecile to refer to people with autism. Mental illness is more often than not summed up as madness. Depression and anxiety are laughed at. In fact, in the face of this blatant ignorance, the people living with mental health problems begin to question the reality of their illness.

People don't say "hard of hearing" or "visually impaired". People don't use words like "attachment parenting", "baby-led weaning" (baby led? Parents see themselves as the potters and the babies as the clay. Ain't no baby leading nothing!). People don't go to their kids games to cheer both teams. They keep scores and they cheer for their kids (not necessarily the team! ). The list is endless!

Coming from that background,  I must say I have done a good job, learning, unlearning and relearning. However, on some days like today, I just want the freedom to tell this lady next to me to grow some balls! I just want to scream that it's rather immature to tell a bunch of people to stop discussing their parenting methods because said methods make you feel bad.

In her opinion,  only evil parents let their children cry it out and soothe themselves to sleep. This thinking in itself is completely valid. To each his own, right? However, it's incredibly silly and even bratty to tell a group of adults to stop their conversation because it bothers you. I want to scream, "There's a door. Use it". Instead, in keeping with western world courtesies, I will smile, confirm that irreparable damage hasn't been done to her sensitivities and use the door myself. 

Being polite is exhausting. I'm tired. Bloated from all the swallowed words.

Flying without wings

While doing our (baby, daddy and I) bedtime ritual, my mind wandered to an amusing time in my life. A time that seems now, like lifetimes away. I was rocking my son and singing to him. I started out with Boundless Love, Blessed Assurance, Amazing Grace, (he should have slept, but no!) Pour my love on you... I ran out of sweet gospel melodies and dug into my FGGC music competition playlist. Santa Lucia, Edelweiss... then R&B. I started singing Westlife's Flying without wings and that was when it happened. 

I was 16 and had a massive crush on a certain guy. Let's call him Dude. So Dude was 10 years older and was (at the time) everything I hoped my first boyfriend would be. And yes, he was my 1st boyfriend. I remember all the sneaking around. The countless lies to get out of the house and go hang with my beau. The way he taught me how to kiss. Bottom lip... upper lip... then the tongue (and pls no teeth!). I remember the way my heart beat so fast when he touched my breasts the 1st time. I thought I'd have a heart attack. Errmm... how did we progress from lips to boobs? We listened to music a lot, and at the time, one of our favorites was Flying without wings. Now, it is not clear whether it was 'our' favorite or MY favorite, but who cares?

As I sang that song to my little boy, I laughed at the folly of youth. At 16, what was I thinking when I listened to that song? Did I look at Dude and think I was in love? I still know the lyrics. Every single word. Incase you've never heard it, pls click here for the video/lyrics. Follow me, as I break down some of the lyrics.

"...You'll find it in the deepest friendship
The kind you cherish all your life..."

Really? How deep could that friendship have been? As for cherishing it for the rest of my life, I don't know about that! Haven't seen or spoken to Dude in at least 12 years.

"...Well, for me it's waking up beside you
To watch the sunrise on your face
To know that I can say I love you..."

I definitely remember lying in my bed and dreaming of what it would be like to wake up beside Dude every morning. I used to tell myself that he was too perfect. he would never have morning breath or any such imperfection and his farts would smell like potpourri. Yeah yeah yeah... 

"...And you're the place my life begins
And you'll be where it ends..."

I am thankful that God wasn't paying me any attention cos my life is just getting interesting! Imagine it had ended then! What an empty and uneventful life it would have been. Oh well,I guess when you're 16, you think that you're all grown up and living it up is not wearing school uniforms, wearing badly applied makeup, wearing tampons, not having a curfew, perming your hair, hiding to drink a bottle of Guinness (horrible tasting shit!), having a boyfriend, kissing, talking about kisses and dreaming about sex... These were the things 'grownups' did and therefore as a young girl doing them felt like I had arrived. Ridiculous.

Remembering that episode in my life was funny. I actually laughed out loud. The funniest memory of that relationship was our first and only valentine's day. I wasn't sure if he would get me anything and so didn't want to get him something and risk looking silly, so I went to his house empty-handed. Got there and his cousin told me he wasn't home. I waited for what seemed like forever. I think I even fell asleep on the couch. I felt a tap on my back and woke up. There he was. My handsome boyfriend (lol). He had a huge bag of precious little things for me. I don't remember all of it, but I remember the teddy bear and the Cerutti 1881. He attached funny one-liners to every thing in that bag. I hugged him and knowing me, I bet I cried. Lol. I can proudly say my first big girl valentine's day was a great one. 

That's that. Now, everytime you hear that song on the radio, I bet you'll think of me! Hahaha!

Did you marry your best friend?

Isn't it funny how we say, "I married my best friend"? I asked my husband yesterday, "Who is your best friend?" Without thinking, he said, "Trevor". I asked myself the same question and my answer is and has been Uju. So does that mean that we are not well suited? Cos I see all these couples who say, I married my best friend and I wonder why I am the only one who didn't have a best friend she decided to marry. 

When I started dating my husband, we connected so well that in a month we probably knew as much about each other as our best friends knew about us. Then we progressed and we got married. Now, two years into that marriage, we know things about each other that nobody else knows. So maybe,  when people say, "I married my best friend", that's what they mean. Maybe best friends are the people who know things about us that nobody else knows. 

On friends, I need to write another post on that. We have different friends who serve different purposes in our lives and who we reach out to at different times. I wish there was a shorter word for random friends. Acquaintances is too damn long!

Random #2

He couldn't keep driving. This was beyond the 5 second random itch. It was intense. He pulled into a strip mall's parking lot. There was a convenience store. Maybe they sold condoms. He thought to himself, why didn't I keep her waiting an extra 30 minutes? A short detour to the pharmacy would have saved him from this messy situation. Scratch. Scratch. He couldn't stop scratching. He unzipped his pants and cranked up the AC. Oh Evelyn! 
He dreaded going home to Rebecca. She must be a witch, he thought. She always knows what's going on with me and with everyone else. Father God, deliver me from Evelyn and whatever this is that she has passed on to me!

Random #1

She smiled at him. It wasn't a happy, i-have-missed-you smile. It was a smile burdened with knowledge. As he walked into the living room and took off his coat, she smelled Evelyn. Evelyn and her cheap hausa perfume. 
She thought to herself, if I were a man cheating on my wife, I would arrive at my mistress's house, take off my clothes at the door and wrap them in a plastic bag till it was time to leave. After all, it's not like one goes to his mistress at 8pm for high tea!

My Marijuana Chronicles (the concluding part)

After missing my marijuana treatment for 1 week, I had a seizure. That was probably what I needed to convince myself that the treatment was working. My greatest fear was my baby. I was terrified that something might happen to him. Hours later, at the hospital with my mother-in-law clutching my hand, the doctors said the baby was doing just fine. Lesson learned!

Many times through the pregnancy I wanted to tell my doctors I was taking marijuana. The reason I didn't was because I knew that would be their go-to reason for everything that happened to me that period. I suffered incessant vomiting and pains and iron depletion in pregnancy. But you know what, I would take all those things and more in exchange for seizures. For some weird reason, marijuana does nothing else for me. Doesn't give me a high, doesn't work as a pain killer or treatment for nausea and vomiting. These are all things users swear it does. Not me.

In a few days, it will be 1 year since I had a seizure. There are those nights, lying in bed just before I shut my eyes, when I whisper a prayer of thanks. For many years, my last thought before I slept was always, "God please not tonight". I no longer sit up in bed afraid to shut my eyes because the intensity of the auras I felt were an indication of a looming seizure. Awake, I would remind myself that sleep deprivation would only make it worse. I no longer wake up with that sick feeling in my belly. The feeling that something had happened. I no longer wake up to that question, "Do you know what happened?' There are no mid-sentence interruptions due to absences. The list is endless.

By September next year, all things being equal, I should have an MRI. Fingers crossed. Hopefully the readings will be different. Positive. Hopefully, it will be a few months till I can be medically certified seizure free. Hopefully, my son will never have to worry about his mama. And my husband will never have to wake up to watch me have another seizure. Hopefully, my parents will never again be saddened by the news of my seizures.

Well, that's that. I just bought a bong. One word of advice to marijuana users. Vapor over smoke! I hope sometime soon, marijuana is legalized  and more doctors open their hearts to the endless possibilities in that herb.

The S**t people make us believe

How many times have you heard someone tell you, "you only live once". Well, what if I told you that it's not true. Every morning that you wake up alive is a new day. Now, the decision to live is yours. You either wake up and seize the day, or you wake up and just let the day pass by. Whatever your decision is, remember that you have everyday that you are alive to live; because after all is said and done, you die. When you die, that's it! You don't get to die twice. You wake up, shit happens and then you die. Goodluck.

My Marijuana Chronicles Part 2

Hey! I am back to continue my conversation on marijuana and me.

After I watched the documentary, my heart and mind opened. The documentary featured the story of a young girl who was having about 300 seizures a week! Yes, 300! She lived in a wheel chair with a protective helmet on. She could not have the life that every 5 year old was having. She could not learn or play in the yard because this disease had ravaged her body and mind. Her parents had tried every prescribed medication out there and nothing was working. They were at the point where doctors were considering starting her on veterinary medicines for seizures. It was then that they learnt of marijuana. They decided to try it, and found the growers in Colorado who developed a strain that would work well for seizures. In no time at all, her seizures were reduced to 1 per week! I cried over and over when I watched that documentary. Even as I write now, I remember her and my heart melts. If you or your loved one has ever suffered seizures, you will understand the trauma.

 After I watched the documentary, I began to consider the marijuana alternative. I knew I did not want to buy off the street. When you buy something like weed off the street, you can almost be sure that people mix it up with tobacco and all other things to increase their profit. My next step, was to research how to get medical marijuana in Canada.

At the end of the week, I had come up with a couple of options. I could either apply to the government for  a medical marijuana license, or apply to a not for profit dispensary. The latter seemed the quickest option. That way, I wouldn't have to deal with all the red tape. To get marijuana from a dispensary, you had to have one of the listed diseases. The listed ones include: arthritis, cancer, anxiety, Crohn's, glaucoma, epilepsy etc. You also had to get a diagnosis from your doctor. As was expected, my doctor was reluctant to support my decision. I made it clear to him that it is my life and therefore my decision. He could not deny me a diagnosis, so he sent it. All I had to do was fill some forms and fax the diagnosis. In a week, I had my ID card and was ready  to buy my first dose.

My first visit to the dispensary was an education. For my condition, I needed a strain that was calming. One that had more sedative effects as opposed to a 'high'. A strain higher in Indica than Sativa. I went through Bubba Kush, OG Kush, Purple Kush etc. I went through the munchies. I went through the raised eyebrows (I still do!). The single most important thing to me, then and now, is that it worked! It works! My seizures stopped. The absences stopped. Just like that! It was unbelievable.

I started to sleep without fear. I was no longer afraid to sleep for fear that I would have a seizure. Or afraid to stay awake for fear that the sleep deprivation would trigger a seizure. I was no longer afraid! It was amazing. Then I got pregnant. Seeing as I had lost a pregnancy earlier in the year, it almost seemed like God had done that to lead me to the place I was. The last quarter of 2013 is one that we will not forget in a hurry. I gained seizure control, I got pregnant, my husband got a better job offer and we made a big move to Vancouver.

In the middle of all of this, I got carried away. You see, my husband had moved to Vancouver and I was supposed to join him about 3 weeks later. He left on a Sunday. The movers came to get our things and I moved in with my friend. My marijuana cookies were finished and I had previously never bothered to learn how to grind the grass and place in the vaporizer. The husband did it all the time for me. When he left, I slacked and stopped taking my marijuana. Believe it or not, 10 weeks pregnant, exactly one week after he left, I had a seizure.

I am going to stop here for now. Mummy duty beckons. I promise, the 3rd part will be the concluding part. :)

My marijuana chronicles Part 1

         I have to share the story of my marijuana experiment and how it has made me a happier, healthier, saner person. I have suffered from epilepsy since I was 16. So that's 14 years ago. Getting that diagnosis was a huge blow. It felt like my whole world was destroyed. I had the lemons thrown at me and no recipe for lemonade! Oh well, I sucked it up and moved on as best as I could. The silver lining for me was that the seizures were purely nocturnal. At first, I was sad. Then I became ashamed. I remember people asking me what pills I was taking and sometimes I'd lie and say they were pain killers. It seemed more acceptable to say I had migraines than to say I had epilepsy. My parents and sisters were very supportive. I had good friends for the most part. I dated guys who didn't make me feel any less of a human being. Believe me, coming from Nigeria, it's a big deal.

          The months turned into years and time was passing. Nothing was changing. Every time I thought they had finally found the miracle drug to manage my seizures, they would come back again. It was like I was on a never-ending roller-coaster ride. I started with Tegretol. Worked well until I had a drug reaction. Then came Phenobarbitone. I was in university. I could not handle the drowsiness and lethargy that came with the drug. Moved on to Epilim (valporic acid). Worked well until it didn't. Then I moved on to Epilim Chrono. Same thing but continuous release. I moved to Canada. Epilim wasn't sold here so I was placed on Divalproex. Same generic name. Once again, it worked until it didn't.

          As soon as I settled down in Canada and got a family doctor, I made moves to see a neurologist. It must have been almost a year later that I got sent to this kind old man, Dr. B. He was fun to chat with and would tell me about his family and his grand kids and their vacations etc. After our third visit when I told him I had a boyfriend, he suggested I switch meds. Lol. Just incase I got pregnant. You see, valporic acid is not the drug of choice for pregnant women.So, we started making plans to switch to Keppra (Levetiracetam). I was excited because at the time, I was having seizures at least twice every month. It was exhausting!
We made the switch and all seemed to be going well. Things changed after a couple of months. I started having absence seizures. They continued to increase in frequency. About six months later, I was having full blown seizures every couple of weeks and the absences at least 3 times everyday. That was my breaking point. I knew something had to happen. And fast!

          I poured myself into researching alternatives. I decided to speak to my doctor about surgery. I knew the risks involved, but I was at a point where anything was better than doing nothing. I started to prepare myself mentally.
     
          Suddenly, the conversation changed. Someone really close to me started the marijuana conversation. I laughed it off. To me, marijuana was a recreational drug. I didn't even give it a second thought. This friend kept trying to convince me. He even told me how marijuana had helped a skin condition he had. I still wasn't interested. Then he asked me to look out for a documentary called Weed. It was put together by CNN's Sanjay Gupta. Watching that documentary changed my life!

          I'll stop here for now. If you are interested in watching the documentary Weed, please click here.

Watch this space, I'll be back.
xoxo

I'm back... I think!

I have been away for a while because life just took over. News flash! I am having a baby! I have gone through the various stages of pregnancy and now I am at the point where I just can't wait to birth my son. Initial stage for me was, "Thank you God! My prayer has been answered!" With bated breath we went through the 1st trimester. I was sick all the time. Could not keep food down and on the bad days, even water was a task to keep down. That phase went by and ushered in the 2nd trimester. 
Life was going well, we moved from Toronto to Vancouver. Awesome city, amazing weather and my DH's new job. All was well,except my DS was cutting me no slack! I kept dealing with nausea through to almost 20 weeks. The good side was I didn't have all the associated ugliness that sometimes comes with pregnancy. Uneven skin tones, swollen feet and hands and sometimes noses. Yup, noses. Pregnancy was treating my outward appearance with respect. My belly was growing outwards and not widespread, so I didn't look too fat. I have somehow managed to gain only 10lbs in 8+ months. I can't deny my joy. My nails and hair are doing well too. 2nd trimester was my season to enjoy the glow, the sex and the sound sleep. 
3rd trimester! I must drive DH nuts with my whining! I am constantly complaining about something or the other. My back, my hips, my belly, indigestion, heart burn... the list seems endless. That's where I am now. With a few weeks to go, we are excitedly awaiting our little boy. We day dream of our lives with him and pray that we make good parents. I can't wait!

P.S. Pardon me as this blog will probably become an all things baby blog!