Respect for Health

I was just reading someone else’s blog about her experience with epilepsy. She said that she had only talked about her epilepsy with two other people besides her doctor - her mother and grandmother. Her isolation with it saddened me, but also resonated with me throughout many years of my epilepsy.

In a brief narrative, the author had outlined her fears - 

fear of epilepsy itself

fear of a medical system that may not pay for her condition

fear of the dementia that can come with her form of epilepsy 

fear of other side effects from the medication she was taking

fear of how her children would handle seeing their mother have a seizure.

She had been seizure free for three years at that writing in 2008.

I wonder how she and her family have fared since then.

I am grateful for the healthy respect that I developed for not just epilepsy, but my general health. As a nurse, it has usually been easy for me to teach others about health care but not so easy to look in the mirror and teach myself. As a mother, although it took many years to learn what behaviours to change, it was suddenly easy to begin paying attention to my personal health care.

“Respect your efforts, respect yourself.  Self-respect leads to discipline.

When you have both firmly under your belt, that’s real power.

~ Clint Eastwood