Poem

Hi guys,

Thought I would share this with you:

Helen Cooper, a working mother with three teenage children, was first diagnosed with complex partial epilepsy when she was 14. Her epilepsy was controlled for twenty years from her late 20s until her late 40s. That changed two years ago when she had a massive sequence of seizures and her epilepsy continues to play a major part in her life. She wrote this poem while she was trying to come to terms with having frequent seizures again.

Monty Python's playing to an empty living room,
but I've fallen to the kitchen floor
cold and crying and confused and Mum's hysterical
and Dads shushing her
and next we're in a blue-walled office
with a doctor in a white coat and a nurse in a hat
and my Mum's dressed to seduce in red and cream.
They talk learning difficulties:
I don't ask why, though I'm in the grammer A stream.
But at uni I'm free and forget about epilepsy

I'm working in a pink high rise in Sutton
and suddenly
I'm in the medical room
attended by a tiny Malay nurse,
and John drives me home.
And I fit and I fit
on aeroplanes, into my inky Imperial
on the tube, and in Notting Hill's
carnival crush.

Today I'm a Jobcentre worker
and everything's fine (twenty years fit free)
when a massive fit paralyses me
for twelve scary hours.

The duty neurologist says "one-off"
but increases my Tegretol-
"just-in-case".
And I'm on the floor of the Jobcentre
and they're keeping the public out
and they dial 999
but the ambulance man won't move me
and my consciousness is gone, all wonky
and two hours I lie on the floor
while the benefits don't get paid.

And I fit and I fit
and I yell at my creator
why do I have to be controlled?
My epilepsy's part of me!
During my post-partial
complex meanderings
my body's locked tight
but my soul's healing
and my psyche's understanding-
exactly what, though,
my unaltered consciousness can't explain