By Stephen C. Schultz The dew around the window was starting to bead up. In a classic case of chaos theory, the little beads of water gave way to gravity and randomly bounced and bumped their way to the window sill like a steal marble in a pinball game. There was a small pool of water in the cracked and peeling beige paint. I sat facing the window, staring at the small engraved stone nestled in the flower beds. There weren’t many flowers at this time of year. Mostly rhododendrons and Oregon grapes reaching skyward from the damp bark mulch that covered the planter area. The month of January in Eugene Oregon was filled with days and days of mist and fog. In fact, pretty much from October through June was filled with fog, rain, mist, showers, freezing rain and occasionally snow. The local weathermen didn’t bother with predictions about the chance of precipitation; they took pride in developing new adjectives to describe the type of precipitation and how much you can...
By Stephen C. Schultz As a father, I never anticipated seeing and emotionally supporting my daughter through 50 seizures a day, for days on end. Each seizure brings with it a stiffened left arm and leg, convulsing motions, eyes rolling back to the left, and her head contorting to the right. Her breathing stops for the duration. The most harrowing aspect is that she remains conscious and aware of her surroundings. She can hear people talking, but her body simply does what it does. After 15 to 30 seconds of not breathing, a panic begins to set in. What if the seizure doesn’t stop? It’s a horrific experience to endure time and time again. It is nothing short of torture, with the emotional and psychological trauma that accompanies it. There were four seizures in the car on the way to the emergency room, all within about 20 minutes. After 10 hours in the emergency room, she was admitted and immediately hooked up to an EEG. There was a computer screen displaying graphs and a video...