I'll have a special update this weekend in honor of the rant below. Beware it.

I've learned so much since then and funny thing is almost three years later I feel like I've made no progress is my medical journey. But screw this - it's Friday. *throws everyone party hats*

- Juno Blair B.

[OLD RANT - SEPTEMBER 2004]
First of all, THANK YOU. I don't think I've ever been so scared in my entire life and to see all of the support you guys have given me... I just don't even know where to start. I wish I could offer something in thanks... but I guess I'll just give you updates. ^_^" I'd like to thank specifically Patrick, Stef from Sarah Zero, Cabbie and the OUT forums, the BuzzComix forums, my wonderful little SCD cult *muah* and all the people who emailed me. I wish I could have emailed you all back. I was expecting to be able to until I got back and saw how many of them there were. O_o Hugs and love out to all of you. I'm so thankful to have had such a strong support system to help me cope with this experience.

And now, a recap of the week from hell:

I'll start from the beginning in case some of you missed the first filler.

Last week, late Wednesday night I was admitted to the emergency room for what I thought was a normal anxiety attack. I get this almost at random even without any triggers so I wasn't too concerned. I almost didn't even go until I suddenly started going into convulsions, getting tunnel vision, having trouble breathing and slipping between what seemed from trance to consciousness. While there they did a cat scan and found what appeared to be cancerous growth on the membrane between my brain and skull. That Thursday I was immediately flown to Houston to have emergency surgery to have it removed. When the doctors at Houston did an MRI the supposed tumor turned out to be merely a calcium deposit. Who knows how it got there but once I started explaining to my neurologist what I've been going through lately from the tremors (my shakey hands) to the fainting spells to the trances, my neurologist told me I had temporal lobe epilepsy, a common form of epilepsy. Temporal Lobe epilepsy is a neurological condition, which affects the nervous system. Basically, I'm Juno from the comic but my lightning stays in my head. ^_^ But it explains a lot.

There are several types of Epilepsy that make Temporal Lobe Epilepsy look like child's play. Typical TLE usually consists of Complex Partial Seizures which could be best describe as sudden short circuits that only last 30 seconds - 2 minutes. My seizures are usually atonic (sudden loss of consciousness aka fainting spells) which can occasionally be followed by tonic-clonic seizures (not too often) which are what you usually think of when you think seizures; the convulsions, the trances. The seizures I get several times daily are called Simple Partial Seizures which are incredibly minor as compared to the tonic-clonic. These are what caused the suppoosed "anxiety attacks" - The usual symptoms can range from sudden changes in heart rate, numbness, dizzyness or spinning, tunnel vision, heightened sensory perception, memory loss, garbled speech, trances, and confusion.

So yeah, that's your Juno in nutshell. I was at first not going to go into detail about this. I wasn't going to say anything about the epilepsy. Then I decided, screw it. I'm not going to be ashamed of something like this nor am I going to let some stupid disorder control my life. And what do I care if you guys know? If this changes your opinion of me in a negative sense then it's you that has the problem. My life is definitely going to take a some rebuilding though. There's a lot of changes I have to make. There are things I can no longer do... there are some really scary possibilities that could develop but you can't live your life in fear of things that may or may not happen. I cannot and I will not let this control my life.

And on that note, I'm hoping for page 83 to be up Saturday or Sunday. ^_^

Thanks again guys. *muah!* I'm very lucky to have all of you and I'm so glad that I will be able to continue to share this story with you.