Becca Andrews’s 2/3/22 WIRED article (“They Were ‘Calling to Help.’ Then They Stole Thousands”) focuses on her mother who was scammed by a caller. That woman has a form of epilepsy caused by scar tissue in her brain. After surgery, her life mostly returned to normal. She was able to drive a car and raise her two daughters. However, things started deteriorating over time and she started struggling with basic tasks.
I couldn’t help but notice that the two of us are disturbingly similar. Both of us have poor memory. Both of us managed to earn college engineering degrees despite finding it hard to study. Both of us have poor focus, making it hard to comprehend text sometimes. Both of us need to rely heavily on to-do lists in order to get through the day. Both of us often get overwhelmed by simple everyday chores and routines.
Honestly I don’t know what to think about this discovery (aka finding the first patient with a mild epilepsy similar to mine). It’s reassuring to see that Becca’s mother could survive so long and live to be an old woman, but it’s troubling to see how much she has to rely on friends and family. It’s also troubling that even though the cause of her epilepsy was determined, the doctors were still not able to find a cure.
Anyway, trying to figure out why seizures keep happening is like debugging server code without having access to the server itself. I have to keep making REST API calls (aka trying different fixes) and see what works. Too bad I can’t run a local server with breakpoints; otherwise finding a cure for my unique problems (aka what I’ve dubbed “Position 2”) would be so much simpler.
