Journey’s End – A Tiny French Village Outside of Paris Offers Recovery From Epilepsy
October 2, 2013 by admin
Two more days on the open road and then I fly to Denver, Colorado, from Paris, France, concluding my fourteen-month around-the-world junket. And the little French bedroom community of Saint Mard is serving as an excellent resting place for me to prepare to spend almost 24 hours in the air. But I have another reason to take it easy on my final week of traveling.
On September 16, the Stockholm, Sweden Airport delivered a strange surprise. I lost two whole days of my life! Preparing to board a plane to Amsterdam, I experienced the first epileptic seizure of my life and fell and hit my head. Luckily, I wasn’t in the air yet. I came to on September 18 in the Uppsala Sweden Hospital with absolutely no recollection of the event. I’d been in a coma for two days and my tongue had a dime-sized bite missing from the left side.
Since I have no known medical conditions and take no medicines, this was a big mystery. The MRI showed a clear brain and all tests were negative. I’m in great health and had done nothing to have caused this. So, it’s a big mystery and an odd way to get a complete health check-up yielding no answers. But, I’d rather that than a dire discovery.
Anyway, I went to an Uppsala Hostel for a week of lounging about and finally flew to Amsterdam for just three days before taking the train to Paris last Sunday, four days ago. My tongue is healed and I feel fine. I’m in a private room in Hotel Balladin, which is a motel in Saint Mard, thirty minutes by train from downtown Paris. This is French farm country, where the only restaurant is Turkish and I’m a local the second time I eat there.
I did go to the city for an afternoon and shopped a bit in Montmartre but the tourist in me is tired. Hop-on, Hop-off busses offer power sightseeing but the city is a little too much and a little too crowded for an un-tourist like me. So, I haven’t much to report about Paris … yet, anyway.
That’s okay! I was “Somewhere” when I was out for 48-hours and I have no memories of that either. It’s really pretty comforting to know that when all the emergency drama is swirling around you…when you’re either dead or down, and everybody is feeling so concerned about you…..that you are absolutely checked out and off somewhere else. It doesn’t hurt. Nothing bad really happens. It’s only our perception of it…and the inconvenience, the mystery, and the expense….when we come to, that goes to work on us, once we are back in the conscious world.
Guess that’s what Nirvana means. Apparently, I’ve been there now but I can’t come back and report on it.
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