The Limitations of the Tiny Little Mother Mind™ and #SeezJahBoy

It's a big world.

That's what I tell myself when I read about or hear about things that are otherwise incomprehensible. It's a big world, I thought when I read about plushies in a Vanity Fair magazine in the last millennium. It's a big world, I thought when I actually ran into a plushy convention at a resort hotel in Orlando where I was attending a children's healthcare convention. It's a big world, I thought, when people started talking about reality shows and women being famous for being famous,  It's a big world, I thought when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor of California, and it's a big world, I thought, when certain celebrities insured their famous asses, literally. It's a big world, I think, when people get all geared up for the season of bashing brains into dementia, otherwise known as football. It's a big world, I thought when people -- some of whom I actually know and love -- voted for and continued to support Donald Trump, even after he imitated and mocked a disabled man and bragged about his prowess grabbing women's pussies. That one was a stretch, to tell you the truth.

A lot of people are excited about last night's Miss America pageant -- how Miss Michigan, a blonde Barbie doll, made a comment about the bad water in her home state and appears "woke" in the newest sense of the word, and Miss New York, a black Barbie doll, won the prize. It's a big world, I'm thinking, wondering how in 2018 we still have beauty pageants (although I've read they're no longer "beauty" pageants, and there's no more bathing suit competition). What's that expression? Whatever floats your boat?

Anywho.*

My tiny little mother mind™ was seriously taxed today when I learned that Netflix released some movie called The After Party that's getting all the raves. Evidently, the main character has a seizure (after smoking marijuana) while rapping on stage, projectile vomits and falls to the ground writhing. The moment is captured on video, it goes viral, he's called "Seizure Boy," and soon everyone is doing the #SeezJahBoy dance.

This is comedy.

Sigh.

Where do we start? The young man who plays the character is an up and coming rapper and has a bazillion followers on Instagram. He sees himself, ironically, as a bullying advocate. People with epilepsy are commonly bullied. This is a fact. I know countless people whose children have been bullied, have been mocked and derided when they've had a seizure in school. The stigma of epilepsy is still so strong that adults with epilepsy often don't tell their employers that they have it. Teenagers with epilepsy are often at higher risk for anxiety and depression, and much of that can be attributed to our culture's ignorance of the disease.

So, yeah, back to #SeezJahBoy. Despite condemnation from different news sources and epilepsy and seizure awareness foundations, the hashtag is viral at this point. I have heard from good friends in the epilepsy community that when people go in to these conversations on Twitter and Facebook, in an attempt to counter the ignorance, they are being called trolls or "racists" (because the movie is predominantly by black people). How many people did this show have to go through to get put on the air? Are we overly sensitive as parents of children with epilepsy or individuals with epilepsy? Do I think the show should be pulled? To tell you the truth, this sort of thing so taxes my tiny little mother mind that I think nothing at all. I don't have the energy to think about some stupid movie that makes a mockery of people with epilepsy. I don't give a fuck about the writers, the editors, the sound people, the young actors and wannabes that made this movie. There is no big world that holds such shit. The big world shrinks in to a dot, and that dot is a portal to my house where my epileptic daughter sits in her wheelchair, the little vein in her forearm penetrated by a needle that brings an infusion of antibodies to her brain, so many antibodies that they literally flood her brain and dilute out the bad antibodies that have been wreaking havoc, causing her to seize, near constantly, in her sleep and subsequently destroying her ability to walk and eat and move in the world.

Dance on, #SeezJahBoy people.

The world is ugly,
And the people are sad.

Wallace Stevens, Gubbinal


















*New Readers should know that I hate this expression and only use it facetiously.

How We Do It: Part ? in a Series Where I Call on the Hive Mind

For how could one express in words those emotions of the body?

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse 

I need the hive mind as collective unconscious, acting in community and sharing in resources and thoughts. I don't need conformity or group-think. There are two ways of seeing the hive-mind, and I'm not seeing it as pejorative. That being said,

Help.

I just had a little bit of a freak-out after trying to feed Sophie. I've written before about this, but things that used to come easily to her: eating, drinking, swallowing, walking, going to the bathroom (pooping), reaching for things, generally moving, are sporadically and inconsistently difficult for her. 

Let's cling to the word inconsistent.

I can't do this anymore, is what I said on the phone just now. I am reaching back to the past, to all the times that I couldn't "do this anymore." I leaned my head on the wall. I was sitting in a chair in my bedroom on the far end of the house, the farthest away from the front end of the house where Sophie sat in her chair. I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't do it anymore back on the fourth floor of the walk-up on West 73rd Street in 1995 and placed the screaming baby in the middle of the bed, then walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower and crouched on the floor next to the toilet. There is something very primitive about not being able to even feed your child, I said on the phone just now. Soft egg lay all around Sophie's wheelchair and the dog lurked at my feet, trying to edge in. I remember Sophie pacing around her room like a drooling tiger back when she was on the ketogenic diet and I'd come into her room with a tiny ceramic dish of frozen butter and a slice of strawberry on top that was her meal. The brutality of that time. Eighteen years ago. Those two examples suffice.

My point is that I can't do this anymore. (You know I can).

So, hive mind. What is going on? I am waiting for the results of an MRI that Sophie had last week, but I'm pretty certain it will be inconclusive. Her most recent EEG shows nothing more than the general fuckery of Lennox-Gastaut syndrome and the seizure pattern that she's had for more than two decades. She is, actually, doing pretty well on the clinical seizure front, given her history. Does a body just finally tire out from all the shit? I am suspicious of Sophie being over-medicated. There's the Onfi, the Clonidine, the CBD, the THC. 

Please buzz together and by yourself. Send me your thoughts. 

What does it mean then, what can it all mean? (more Virginia Woolf, from To the Lighthouse)