Hi peeps! It’s been a while, again. I’m so sorry! But this time I have a good “excuse”. I was in the hospital!!!! I have been having some kind of episodes or spells since the beginning of August. During these episodes, I sometimes just fall asleep…but not like normal sleep. Like the sleep you go into when you’ve been awake for 72 hours. Sometimes, my eyes close but my brain and ears still work just fine. I can hear everyone and everything around me. I just can’t move, respond, open my eyes, or anything. I become trapped inside my body and mind. These episodes have been getting worse and worse until I was on my second day of being “out” for over 20 hours a day that week. I was tried, dehydrated, sick, and having trouble breathing. So every chronically ill peep’s worst nightmare came true and I ended up calling 911. As someone that used to work for 911, I knew what to expect. The people who responded, the questions asked in rapid fire….I knew all of what was coming. What I didn’t see coming was leaving the hospital a few days later with not 1 but 2 new diagnoses! I have FND (Functional Neurological Disorder) which is manifesting in PNES (Psychogenic Non-epileptic seizures). So apparently I’ve been “seizing” for months and we didn’t know it. And I was not familiar with Functional Neurological Disorder at all! I basically now have almost a full alphabet of conditions and disorders…..yay! 🙁 Why am I sharing this? Because somewhere out in this big world is another person finding themselves trapped in their body and not knowing what is going on. It is TERRIFYING! As someone with PTSD, the knowledge that I can’t help anyone or even save myself if something were to happen often led me down a dark spiral while trapped inside, like being forced to relive a nightmare time and time again with no warning. Yes, things have happened while I’m trapped but thankfully nothing horrific. I did have a fly walk all over my face while I was trapped one afternoon. I was so mad hahaha. But before I get too sidetracked, the whole point of this was to be honest, open, and frank about what I’m going through and how it affects me. So maybe someday, somehow, this post will find it’s way to someone else trapped in their own nightmare. They can read it and say, “Hey! That’s me! Maybe I should be looking into this!”. I refuse to go through hard things and not let others learn before they face it themselves. So for now, I’m going to have my “seizures” as my body needs, keep praising God when I’m trapped inside, and turning lemons into……at this point, I’m making a sandcastle. Yup, it doesn’t make any sense, I know. Welcome to my life 🙂