He is twitching again today. It starts and goes on for
hours, eight, ten, twelve hours perhaps more. Even valium cannot subdue it and
when he twitches, his hands always, feet and stomach regularly, he hardly
reacts at all. Sometimes he will lazily open his eyes, in a way that you know
he is still partially there with you, but expressionless, just like a nod of
recognition you might give a coworker you pass in the street. None of his
seizure meds help, nor the cbd, not the thc and he sweats constantly, his palms
and feet turning cold in that way, though not from the air conditioner, merely cold
and sweaty for their own accord. Usually
preceded by a massive clonic-tonic seizure, the kind where he turns red and
then blue, despite oxygen piped through his nostrils in a steady twenty four
hour stream of ‘wash-unk’s’ from the oxygenator’s electric pump. And an
overabundance of phlegm clogging his delicate and nearly disembodied lungs,
more than ever. Clearing his lungs enough so that twitching will stop. But the
pressure on the lungs from his spine on one side and the diaphragm, lunging
upward from the other, keeps the status quo, the memory of hope; I’ll give you
a few days of this, and you take a few days of that, and together we will bludgeon
consciousness, tit for tat.