Altered Consciousness

“Seelips” I said. “Seelips”¹ I repeated, staring at our ten year old son during our family meal. “What?” he asked.

I was stuck in a chasm of my own mind. It’s as if my anguished, inner-self had surfaced trying to talk to me, trying to communicate with the outer-world it had forever watched with curiosity.

My epilepsy had progressed. A cluster seizure had riddled my brain for the first time.

My wife Amanda — a nurse by trade — was built for this kind of situation. After five minutes she calmly called a friend of ours who knew about this, asking for advice. “Give it another ten minutes, then call 911.”²

Ten more minutes went by as I stayed trapped inside my own mind. My family could only stay with me, waiting.

I don’t write about this in depth for good reason: I was not present.

I thought of St. Teresa of Ávila, whose ecstatic experiences some historians now link to epilepsy. “I remain in what seems a dream, where I neither see nor understand, yet I am conscious of being there,” she wrote. I recognized that place immediately.³

Teresa of Ávila

As mystical as it may sound, something had altered my consciousness without permission.

While writing this I remember our son, Eli, talking away during those fifteen minutes. He stayed with me, and kept me from drifting away.

Slowly I became more connected with reality. Our friend was right; I emerged from that dark place, that seizure. But I didn’t become aware of where I was, I awakened to who was with me: my family.