Blow, don't suck

Well, just as life was getting almost normal (whatever that means) ...

Hoofing the pug along Nepean Highway between Rosebud and McCrae, things got kinda weird last Tuesday night.

I think they must have got weird in a succession of seizures, because I had already pulled over once near the McCrae lighthouse (I remember I couldn't read a text message) before pulling back out onto the road, coming around Anthony's Nose and there: police had set up a breathtesting station right in front of me.

Whatever was going on was not General Seizure, I did manage to operate the machinery fine while being instructed into the little station the whallopers had set up: indicating, slowing, coming out of gear, stopping and all that. But the police officers knew something was up when this bloke with dilated pupils, glazed over look of emptiness and apparently no capacity to speak sucked on the breath-testing device instead of blowing (I know I know, but you're only allowed to laugh AFTER the MRI results!)

Three times they tried before they got a reading that indicated I hadn't been sinking pots all arvo at Stella's. Along the way they also used one of their indicators to tell them I wasn't strung out on disco bikkies or hydro.

I'm guessing the tegretol found in the car search gave them the answers they needed, and for the next 20 minutes I sat on the sea wall with a copper, really trying to answer his questions, but with total disconnection from speech.

By the time an ambulance came to take me to Rosebud Emergency for the mandatory 4 hours of observation, I was able to chat with the coppers (highly embarrassed) and thank them profusely for their empathy throughout what was the biggest 'episode' in two and half years.

Won't be driving in a long time.

And one day it might even be funny that of all the places in the world to have a seizure my right temporal lobe chose a police booze block. It'll also be funny to think what they made of my beekeeper's smoker in the back of the car: because I saw later that they pulled it apart to find only charred gum leaves, not what they'd perhaps expected.

Having another MRI in a few hours to determine whether growth of the mass had anything to do with this big and prolonged episode. If not, and it was just what neuro calls "a more active phase" of the epilepsy, then I might be able to chuckle ... and write the Rosebud coppers a thank-you letter for their patience in dealing - with great empathy - with what they must have thought was a complete moron.