The sting isn’t there anymore

Now, I am running the LA Marathon. Not as a stunt. Not as a maybe. As a real finish line I am training toward — miles under my feet after years when even a steady day felt like a gamble. I am still having breakthrough seizures about once a month or so. That part didn’t vanish. But the sting isn’t there anymore. The fear that used to sit in my chest before every outing, every night’s sleep, every plan I was afraid to make — that weight has eased. A seizure can still come. It no longer owns the whole day before it arrives.

The chains of epilepsy that had bound me for so long were broken. Not because epilepsy disappeared, but because it stopped deciding who I got to be. I no longer fear having a seizure. I respect what my body can do. I prepare. I keep going. It’s just the way my life is — and for the first time in a long time, that sentence feels like freedom instead of a sentence.

I am so thankful that I have an awesome family that has supported me throughout this long process. They sat in waiting rooms. They drove me to appointments. They held the hard days when I couldn’t. They believed in a future I sometimes couldn’t see yet — through childhood scans, telemetry, resection, VNS, DBS, and every breakthrough that tried to knock me back. This story is mine, but I did not walk it alone. Their love is part of why I’m still standing, still training, still choosing the next mile.