Using the drunk to cure the hangover

This would be a lot easier for me to explain if I could actually see you face. If I could look you in the eye, this would be a hell of a lot easier for me to do. But I can't. As far as I know, you're just a nameless, faceless entity, on the other side of my computer screen -- that's all I am to you -- but I'm going to bare my soul to you, nonetheless.

This is an explanation that has been perfected and trimmed, over the years, between various school reports, and explanations, and doctors' visits.

In the third grade, it was decided that I was an epileptic. Fine. (I have --I think-- what are called 'absence' seizures, --pronounced with a French accent-- which means you stare off into space. You are, in essence, absent. The other kind of seizure that I have -- I don't know what it's called, it is possibly the same thing -- is if I'm running, I'll just, like, keep running.) As long as I took the little orange pills, I wouldn't have any seizures. I was, what, eight? Nine? What did I know from side affects?

(I know, without the inflection of voice, that probably sounds bitter. But, it's not. That's just explanation. I need to explain that to get to another part of the story.)

I was on it for two years. Low white blood cell count; Liver enlargement; Lack of appetite; and so on.

So, fifth grade, I'm weaned off the drugs, and I start acupuncture to control the seizures.

There is an anecdote to all of this: When the Acupuncture clinic closed, and moved to a bigger building, they were closed for six weeks. I usually get needles stuck in me on a weekly basis. So, my last truly memorable seizure -- drumroll please! -- I ran head-long into a lawnchair. And not one of those happy plastic ones, either. An old, nasty metal one. Had stitches in my face for like two weeks. And then, the day after I got the stitches out? I run into a tree. Head-on. Break my nose.

Needless to say, I'm not allowed to do very much in gym, or play sports, or anything.

Skip foreward the tenth grade: Fire in one of the Art rooms. Massive fire. Smoke damage. When they clean it up, they use scented soaps and they scatter scented air fresheners throughout the school. (Factoid: Asthma and allergies have increased exponentially, linked to the scented stuff used after the fire.)

Later in the tenth grade, a different doctor declares that I'm not an epileptic; I'm "High-functioning P.D.D." with seizure profile. (PDD, by the way, stands for "Pervasive Developmental Disorder", and is, as it has been explained to me, something like autism).

Okay. Fast foreward to eleventh grade. Stress, allergies, and blinding headaches that we attribute to sinusitis. We go to see an ENT, who says I need surgery, because my septum, and nasal passages are small, and if anything gets inflamed, it presses against anything else. Plus, he'll give me a nose job. Second opinion ENT says, well, first guy didn't notice that my septum isn't the problem, it's the Turbinates. They need to be courterized. (I think that's how you spell it. I'm not sure.) Anyway, second ENT also say that he wants a neurological referral before he touches me.

This summer. The first doctor that I mentioned -- the pediatric neurologist that diagnosed me with epilepsy -- says that it's not sinus, that I may have migraines, calls for a new EEG, (electroencephalogram) and prescribes an anti-migraine/seizure medication for me. Side effects: if you're not used to it, at first, you feel tired, and, actually, drunk.

That's where the joke behind the title of this post comes from. My mom says I'm an excellent drunk. My dad says that I'll never be able to drink ('cause you can't, when you have any kind of major neurological things like me), but this is what drunk feels like. My mom comments that I don't even need a hangover. And I, being the 'excellent drunk that I am, say that the migraines were there own form of hangover.

Yeah.