Hot Flash.....Controlling the things I can control!

Last night is the first night , since I began my blog that I missed a day of posting. I typically write my blog at some point during the day and then post it in the evening just before I go to bed. I worked on my posting last night, but for the first time since I started this the words weren't flowing, and I couldn't seem to tie my thoughts together. So I finally just closed my lap top and decided, I'd try again in the morning.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I woke up to my not so recent friend.... the hot flash. For any of you that have not experienced one, your body seems to suddenly radiate intense heat outward from your very core. There is not much to do, but flip your pillows to the cold side and try and let the sensation pass. So as I lay there with waves of heat rolling off my body, and I tried to close my eyes again with the hope the sensation would pass and I could gently fall back to sleep again, my mind wandered to my blog. And then I had another flash, this time a flash of an idea....the reason I hadn't been able to pull my blog together last night was because I hadn't been sharing what my heart truly wanted to write about that day. Instead I had been trying to focus on the blog I had begun on Saturday morning, before my day's events had reshaped the landscape.

The day began as any typical Saturday morning. We dropped my daughter at Pentagon City, so she could take the metro to work and then headed on our way to begin our day. Saturday's are typically our days to go on adventures. We usually drop Charlie, get some breakfast and then wander the city to find something fun to do. This Saturday, however, we had decided to change the routine in response to my new quest, and we had decided to go workout together for the first time at my gym. We made a quick stop by Dick's, and had just gotten back in the car to head to the gym, when I received a phone call from my daughter's salon. She had just had a seizure and they had called and ambulance were to take her to the hospital, because she had hit her head. My heart fell;  she had been doing so well. She had almost reached the six month mark again and had been studying her Driver's manual in hopes of getting the opportunity to get her Driver's License. We turned the car around and headed to George Washington University Hospital. The gym would have to wait.

I walked into the room where Charlie was laying, and she looked at me with her beautiful, sad eyes and started crying. "Don't say anything. I know this is all my fault. I'm so mad at myself." I held her and tried to comfort her, and then I thought about her words. She was wrong, but she was right too. It is not her fault she has epilepsy. She can not control the fact she was unfortunate enough to have a neurological disorder, but she was right in the sense that she had missed medications and gotten very little sleep the night before. She had allowed her triggers to stack up, so the medications weren't enough and her body then responded with a seizure. But for the first time, Charlie was really owning her piece in the solution to the problem. She was taking ownership of her actions and my heart sang with hope. This was a turning point, and I could suddenly see for the first time the possibility that she would achieve her goal of driving even though it was now at least another six months away. Charlie was learning at a much younger age, the very thing I was trying to achieve in my quest today. Control the things with your body you can control.

So after a long day in the ER, my husband and I came home, handed Charlie off to her very supportive boyfriend, and headed to the gym. A big step for me, as my normal routine after one of Charlie's events is to wallow in my misery, but if Charlie could learn from this, so could I. Control the things I can control. Thank you Charlie for being my daily example of strength, determination and courage.