My Lavender Bucket Hat
This piece is an assignment from Dr. Adam Steiner’s Introduction to Brain and Behavior course. For their final project in this class, students could write either a blog post or a fiction story about some aspect of the brain. The objective was to discuss how some aspect of behavior relates to different neurological functions.
By Jana Weber
I sit down in the back of the class as I dread the day. The second bell rings, indicating the first period of the day has now started. I just transferred to this high school, and I haven’t made any friends yet. I’m not really good at making friends. As I open my notebook, the teacher is writing “consciousness” on the board. I love my psychology class, but I find myself feeling very anxious when we talk about theories of consciousness due to my condition.
A few years ago, I started to have seizures. My doctors didn’t know what was causing them, and they told my mom I would likely stop having them after I got my first period. They were wrong. I am now 17 and still experiencing seizures.
All this talk about awareness is making me start to disassociate. I snap back to reality and remember I am sitting in class. I look over and my professor is pointing at some figure. She says, “consciousness is simply our brain actively processing the sensory stimuli in the current environment”. As I start to overthink my existence, I feel the inside of my body fall into a downward spiral. The lights become overwhelmingly obnoxious, causing me to cover my face. Suddenly, I cannot think straight. The surge of unusual sensations subsides, and I feel a consuming sense of relief.
Did I take my medication this morning? I should be able to remember, but I can only partially think straight. This is what happens right before I have a seizure. I feel my consciousness shift, in the most unexplainable ways. I think I took my medicine. Did I bring my bucket hat to school today?
It starts to happen again. This time it’s much more intense. Rather than my inner self sinking downward, I start to feel my inner persona float up and outside of my physical body. The teacher’s voice is now muffled as if I’m underwater. My vision simultaneously hazes and implodes as my tunnel vision narrows; I realize it might be too late.
I try to fight my aura, but it is not working. I reach down into my bag in hopes of finding my beloved bucket hat. Looking downward causes my vertigo to worsen. Even while going in and out of consciousness, I can identify my lavender bucket hat. Purple is my favorite color, which is ironic because lavender is also the color for epilepsy awareness.
I feel my right arm twitch as I pull my bucket hat over my head. I press the button on the chinstrap and fall back into my seat.
In less than a minute, all of my unusual sensations are stabilized. My bucket hat successfully prevented my aura from developing into another seizure, and I feel a wave of tranquility take over my body. As I come back to reality, I notice the teacher is still lecturing, and it seems as if no one around me acknowledged my mini-crisis.
As I take my hat off and put it back into my backpack, I realize my classmate to my left is looking at me funny. In curiosity, she points at my hat and asks, “What is that?” I take it back out and reply, “This is my bucket hat I put on when I feel like I am going to have a seizure.” She is beaming with inquisitiveness, and it seems as if no one has taught her what a seizure is before.
I explain that sometimes the neurons in my brain get uncontrollable bursts of electrical activity, and it can cause my body to convulse and lose consciousness. I further educate her that my purple bucket hat is a new technology for people with epilepsy; it simultaneously blocks calcium channels while sending small pulses of electricity into my brain to disrupt the abnormal seizure activity. “It is called a calcium-current helmet.”
As she inhales to ask another question, the teacher notices we’ve been talking in the back of the room. She scolds us and warns us that if we keep talking, we will get a detention. Our teacher turns around, and I look at my classmate and whisper “I’m sorry.” She smiles and whispers back, “No worries. Want to sit by me at lunch?”
I smile and nod.
I think I just made my first friend here.
References
“Epilepsy Auras | Epilepsy Society.” Epilepsysociety.org.uk, Nov. 2017, https://epilepsysociety.org.uk/about-epilepsy/what-epilepsy/epilepsy-auras
Riva, Antonella, et al. “New Trends and Most Promising Therapeutic Strategies for Epilepsy Treatment.” Frontiers in Neurology, vol. 12, 7 Dec. 2021, https://doi.org/10.3389/fneur.2021.753753