The past 24 hours have been exhausting. It’s not an unusual statement for a parent. For me, it started with Benjamin having a seizure during dinner last night. It was a big seizure; one he wouldn’t recover from without emergency medication. I can spot them immediately. There’s something about the way his eyes wander, his hands sweat, and his arms suddenly release, so I can easily move his elbows away from his body. After administering the valium, I spent the next seven hours monitoring his breathing, wiping his face of vomit, willing him to sleep peacefully for just a little while, and hoping that when he woke, he would look at me directly when I called his name. I showered him somewhere around 1 a.m. and, convinced that he’d sufficiently emptied his stomach and wouldn’t retch again, administered his regular seizure medication through his feeding tube while he was sleeping, and monitored him until 3 a.m. while doing laundry.

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