It was grand...Grand Mal that is!

I had the worst dream in the history of dreams last night. I killed Lucy. I was at home, in the field next to the garden and I took a big knife and cut her down the middle ad stabbed her over and over and then I was screaming and crying and confessing to mom what I had done and it was supposedly because she had rabies and I had forgotten that there is a cure. I vaguely remember waking up afterward feeling very sweaty and wondering what time it was before falling back to sleep. The next time I woke up I looked at the clock and it was 8:20; I had slept right through breakfast and my alarm. Probably what happened was that when I woke up the first time I turned off the alarm but I don't remember it at all. Also I wasn't wearing a shirt and I don't remember taking it off. So I threw on some clothes, ran downstairs, dumped some cereal down my throat and ran off to the Joan of Arc Hall for eurethmy. As part of the foundations course we have to do an "artistic group," and I signed up for eurethmy. It's fine...kind of like Thai-chi meets Quaker ice-breaker games. I was late, and the whole morning I couldn't get the nightmare out of my head. I told Ben about it and we tried to analyze it but decided it probably had more to do with the fact that yesterday I told some people a story about a woman who was attacked by a rabid raccoon (heard on This American Life podcast). During tea break I ran to the food centre and chatted with Magdalena and confirmed that I would be going to her house, Skylark, for lunch. So after our Foundations lecture on genetic disorders I had a lovely gluten-free meal. Anne Fibbs, a villager in Skylark, also has Coeliac disease, worse than I do, and she seemed pleased that someone shared her fate.

On the farm in the afternoon we hiked up the moor to a blocked drain that Justin has been digging up for weeks. A quick lesson on drains: it rains here. A lot. There are drains running underneath the fields that were built hundreds of years ago by Quakers (HOLLA) and are made of rocks. They have a tendency to collapse and are slowly being replaced by plastic pipes. If the drains are blocked, the water goes into the fields and stunts the growth of the grass and promotes the growth of this scabby reed stuff that the cows don't eat. Okay, onto the story.

So we dug away and I worked my ass off and probably hurt my back again but I refused to switch off with Luis because I hate standing around and doing nothing because it makes me feel like a slacker and I hate that. We dug and pulled out rocks and clay and mud for two hours, and then we went back to the byres and took out the cows and started cleaning.

We were almost finished, and Ben and I were the only one's left in the byres when he suddenly made a funny noise. I turned to look at him and he was turning his head really far around, bending his neck at a bizarre angle. His eyes were unfocused and he started stumbling around. I thought, "Oh great! No one told me he had seizures! Thanks a lot!" but as I was thinking that I went into total...I don't know what kind of mode to call it, I was just super focused and like, "okay, I know what to do." I ran over to him and caught him as he slumped against the wall. Unfortunately he had slumped into the corner where we keep the pitchforks and shovels and things, so I steered his head away from those and held onto it, keeping one hand in between his head and the wall as he went completely rigid and quaked all over. Neil came in and saw the scene and called for Justin. Oddly enough I hadn't thought to call for help. So Justin came in as Ben lay on the floor foaming and spitting blood onto his arm because he had bitten his tongue. Justin moved the tools out of the way and kneeled down beside Ben and he was SO calm and casual about the whole situation because he's seen it so many times. He said that Ben's papers specifically said he did NOT have grand mal seizures, just little ones. "Never trust a piece of paper," he said. After a few minutes the seizing ceased. Justin asked Ben if he and Luis could move him to the hay bales to sit down and I realized Luis was standing behind me. I stepped back and let them pick him up and place him on the bales. He looked completely disoriented and still had bloody saliva around his mouth. Justin asked me to open the gates so they could walk him to the house where he would rest for a while. Only after they had gone into the house did I realize my hands were shaking uncontrollably...I hadn't felt scared or stressed or anything when he had the fit, but now I was all shaky and hyped up. Probably the adreniline rush. Maybe I should be a doctor. I don't think vets get the same kind of action. I am soooo Christina (that reference is for mom). Anyway it was intense and I'm glad it happened because it made me realize I can handle a crisis quite easily and, (I realize this is a bit sick, and probably a good reason for being an ER doc or something) I kind of liked it! All the excitement, frenzy, and even a bit of blood! I'm not saying I hope someone severs their femoral artery so I can save them, I'm just saying...maybe I should be a doctor!

So all in all, a very intense day. Dog killing, grand mal seizures, oh and then I brought the cows back into the byres by myself because I had a total brain lapse and thought we brought them in before tea break when really we do it after. Two of the cows went to the wrong spots and the cow's whose spots they were in got mad and there was lots of scuffling and it was a actually more nerve racking than Ben's seizures. Eventually Luis came in because he wondered where I was at tea break and I felt like an idiot for doing it wrong. Also, before Ben's episode, I got really pissed again because I got the wheelbarrow out and started doing one of the many mucking out jobs in the byres and I was pitching the straw/muck into the wheelbarrow and then taking it outside and pitching it onto the muck heap and Luis asked if he should do it "because of your back" and it made me mad at myself for not being able to do it as fast or as easily as he can and I KNOW it's not my fault I weigh 110 and have no upper-body strength but it makes me mad and I put that anger into heaving big steaming piles of muck onto the muck heap and then I hurt myself. Cool. Not.

So now I'm very sore and tired from the digging and the seizing and the pitch-forking and all that, and must definitely go to sleep. Nighty night. Here's to hoping that nightmare isn't a recurring one...