Lacy has been my best friend...forever. It's actually been just over 20 years, but honestly, I can't remember much about my life before I knew her. We have been through so much together.
We met in college, when I was recovering emotionally from the scariest medical mess of my life. I'd had a reaction to an epilepsy medication for over 2 1/2 years until I finally figured it out for myself and insisted on being taken off of it. She was there every step, although she essentially had to take my word for it all, since it had occurred before we met, and I hope I have done even ten percent for her what she's done for me.
I gave Lacy a crash course in epilepsy and seizure management when she lived with me a few years after graduation. My daughter was a toddler then, and I had just learned I was pregnant again. I had just returned home from the store as she walked in from work, and we were talking as she helped me put everything away.
Suddenly, I felt my familiar aura roll through me, and I suddenly realized this one was for real. I was about to have a seizure on the hard kitchen floor. She sprang into action, trying to close the dishwasher and keep my daughter away from me so she wouldn't get hurt. Since I was pregnant, too, I needed immediate medical attention.
How she survived all of that and didn't run away screaming, I'll never know. She did move out soon afterward, but only because she'd finally saved enough to get her own place.
We lived together for a total of about a year and a half before we had to move way up north, and she found other roommates. We stayed in close touch, and she eventually moved to the midwest and married. I sang a solo at her wedding, and it scared the hell out of me, but I was so glad I could help make her day special.
Lacy had always planned to have children, and since she was 35 when she and David married, she had to start trying to conceive soon. It would be difficult, and she ultimately required medical intervention, but she finally had a breathtakingly beautiful baby boy on June 23, 2006.
Just a few months after Jimmie was born, she called me late at night and told me she was scared that he might be having seizures. She and I had also co-founded a support organization in college, so she had learned a lot about epilepsy, including the fact that there were many different types of seizures. I advised her to call her pediatrician immediately the next morning and insist that Jimmie be seen right away. I couldn't make myself say that they sounded like infantile spasms, which I knew could indicate a very serious type of childhood epilepsy, but she would find out quickly for herself.
Jimmie would undergo several combinations of medications to achieve control, including B6 and ACTH, which is normally used to treat IS, but the control was short-lived, and his IS developed into the dreaded Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome. LGS is an intractable form of epilepsy that results in neurological damage. Although finally controlled for the past 4 1/2 months, Jimmie has severe developmental delay and is much like a one-year-old. He also now has a two-year-old brother, Charlie, who is learning to be a help to his mommy.
Lacy's birthday is tomorrow. Tomorrow is also Purple Day around the world, to raise awareness for epilepsy. Neither she nor I could ever have dreamed that she would need to have in-depth knowledge of epilepsy after she moved out of my house, and I feel like I can do so little, especially being so far away, but I do try to encourage her and cheer her and Jimmie on as he makes every accomplishment, how ever small it may be...and I plan to honor him and others all over the world tomorrow, March 26, by wearing purple...for her birthday, World Epilepsy Awareness Day. Please join me!!
