Hello, I hope you're doing well. I felt it deeply necessary and important to reach out in this hopefully temporary time in our lives.
Tenin is a loving, intelligent, funny, stubborn and TALKATIVE young lady. If she isn't talking your ear off, she's probably sleeping. She loves walks, long drives, having meaningful and fun conversations, writing, reading, eating, and making friends. She's one of six siblings who loves and cares for her deeply. She is my younger sibling.
Tenin is a 26-year-old Dental Assistant. This year in February, she was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease, and later, anxiety and depression. She was doing her best to manage her health, trying to keep up with her appointments and balance work. She felt like a burden and that no one believed or understood her.
On Monday morning of October 20th, Tenin stood frozen in the hallway until my sisters found her after hearing a thud. She'd been holding herself up against the wall trembling, nonverbal and drooling. I called her name and she couldn't respond. By the time the EMS arrived, she began seizing and became postictal. From then she would have seizures in clusters, including tonic-clonic ones and would be unable to speak or move; The longest episode being 12 minutes. It was very scary and throughout the days, whenever she seemed to get better, she would regress. When she was able to speak, just barely, she would say "trapped," "help me," "I love you”. It was heartbreaking for those of us in the room to hear her say “please kill me, I want to die.”
Tenin was also worried about losing her job and out of forgetfulness due to the seizures, would ask us to call them. It was scary and we felt helpless just waiting around for answers while some amazing Doctors, nurses, and CNAs tried their best to advocate for her and get her help. When she was finally transferred to a larger hospital, testing was able to be done to figure out if the seizures were epileptic.
Thankfully, the doctors concluded that she wasn't epileptic, rather, her seizures were due to so much stress that her body and mind had disconnected. We were told that it could take months or up to a year, maybe two for her to get back to "herself" again. But Tenin is a superstar. She is strong, very smart, and vocal- when she wasn't speaking, it was scary. Tenin talks about this being the push she needed to go back to school and pursue her dreams of being a writer. This is just a detour in her journey.
She has so many people who love and care for her. We are and will always be by her side throughout this time. We are only looking up from this point. I wanted to gather support for her in the meantime, so she doesn't have to worry about expenses or feel as though she is not doing her part, because she is. All we want is for her to get better and take it easy, life is too short.
Anything helps; we are grateful you took the time to listen to her story. Thank you so much!