Episode

It was 45 minutes before he began to be responsive. We ate our hamburgers because we didn't know what else to do and they were cooked. One of us would get up and check on him periodically. The time passes slowly and initially you are calm and do what has worked in the past, but then more time passes and we began to think maybe this is it, this is how it ends but you don't stop yet, you keep reacting just in case. We were moving around the house not really talking to one another but in our minds we were both concocting strategies for what to do. Eventually the ER was the answer and that's where Mark took him, only by the time we called an ambulance and arranged to meet them just inside the Canadian border he was coming around, nicely. He squeezed my hand when I asked him to but would not speak. In the car as they pulled out of the driveway I waved at Eddy and he waved back, like nothing was wrong. He was fine but the trip to the emergency could not be aborted and so Mark kept on, making up for the other times when we did not take him perhaps. At midnight they were back home and we were there to meet them, having cleaned up the dinner dishes and crossed the border into Canada, with the dogs and everything else.

At the doctor today Eddy sits looking down and we talk about him like he isn't there, but he is there. He looks mad at times, and scared at other times. He says very little or nothing. We learned from the doctor that when he has one of these episodes we need to elevate his feet. This is good simple advice and it makes me feel empowered for when this happens again. Mark is not so sure and he requests a change to some different meds to try and avoid the seizure all together. We went years without any of these episodes and now they are quite frequent. His state is precarious, his circulation poor, he is slow to respond to much stimulus, he is forgetting how to eat, but he's alive. So we go along with him moment by moment, ill-equipped as we are, our resolve propping him up. It's all we can do.