Devil raspberries

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At 35 weeks pregnant my waters broke and I became a first time mom. My son needed intensive care in another hospital because his lungs were not fully ready to breath...what followed was a very difficult and testing time for me and my partner, seeing our son struggle was traumatic, and to top it we were supposed to finish our new house ( no stairs, no kitchen, no walls or flooring,...) and move all our belongings. Before I got pregnant I decided to leave my highly stressful and absurdly long hours job to start working somewhere that would make it possible for me to be home more and therefore would be more family-friendly. The only difficult thing was that I would have to get another masters degree, so it ended up being busy enough... especially with a newborn. My partner went through a difficult time, being exhausted all the time. Understandably because after we became parents we had to rely on him a lot while he worked six days a week, 10 hours a day, working on our house,...It put a massive strain on our relationship.

I started feeling extremely tired and got lots of headaches and just generally feeling crappy. My guess, and my doctors, was that I was having a little burn-out. I decided to fight this (probably the wrong way) by continue working and taking an antidepressant. I didn't want to take time off of work, since I just started working my new job and got a temporary contract that would only be made permanent after a year. The antidepressant worked a little; I didn't worry so much all the time. But I had a couple side effects: Feeling a bit shaky, hyper, insomnia plus plus plus...

A couple of weeks later I was sitting in the sofa holding my son. I woke up with paramedics standing around me...I had had my first grand mall seizure. Many more followed and I was in and out hospital. The doctors assumed that they were triggered by stress, insomnia and my anti-depressant and occasional sleeping pill use...

I decided it was long overdue that I changed my lifestyle. I asked for sick leave and started talking to a psychologist. But then I got the results of my MRI brain scan...it turned out I had 15 plus cavernoma's. One of them was to big and ready to kill me. So I am now scheduled for brainstem surgery next week...

In the mean time I got worse and worse. My headaches became more frequent and sometimes unbearable. I was sick a lot. My balance is off, I walk a bit funny and I sometimes have double vision. My memory is full of holes, it is difficult to concentrate, I get emotional very quickly. And worst of all I continue to have tonic-clonic seizures even though I am taking anti-epileptic medicines.

I lost my driver's license and my job, I can't continue my master's...but I feel blessed having friends and family around and a beautiful healthy son:)

E.