Patient Zero

Individuals aren't always born with epilepsy — sometimes it gets activated later in life. I made it all the way to high school before it hit me. And when it did, it crashed into my life. Literally.

In El Paso, high school is everything. When someone asks where you went, it's like Mufasa showing Simba the Pride Lands — which part is yours? I ended up at Austin High, home of the Golden Panthers, and an alumna that includes Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. No pressure.

I had one goal going in: graduate in the top 10 percent and walk across that stage in white. My mom was a proud El Paso High Tiger — rival school, rival colors — but she put her foot down when I tried to transfer somewhere else. So Austin it was, because a little rivalry was fun when football came around.

I hit the ground running. I was picked to be on the school newspaper. I was one of the only freshmen driving to school. My mom needed the help — I'd pick up my sisters, run to pay utilities on my lunch break. I was 15 and already juggling more than most adults.

I didn't even make it a full month before everything changed.

One day I left class with a migraine and ended up in the nurse's office sweating through my shirt. "What's wrong?" she asked. "I have a headache and I'm sweating profusely." I remember it word for word — mostly because I have never used the word "profusely" again in my life.

She called my mom. After that it's a blur until I was in a hospital bed being told to hug a pillow so a doctor could stick a needle into my lower back. If you've had an epidural, you know exactly what I'm talking about. That's a spinal tap. They extract spinal fluid and test it — if it comes back clean, you're fine. If it comes back dirty, you've got meningitis. Mine came back dirty. Which is probably why Christina Aguilera wrote "Dirty." I had bacterial meningitis.

Within hours I was moved from the ER to my own room. Everyone who walked in had to suit up — in the words of Tyra Banks, H2T, head to toe — gown, gloves, mask. My mom showed up looking like she was in a hazmat suit. I was 14, alone, and felt exactly like patient zero. They put me at the end of the hall just to complete the picture. I was there for a month.

I finally returned to school thinking the worst was behind me. I was wrong.

One day I left campus during lunch and woke up down the street with my airbags deployed, wearing what looked like Mr. Monopoly's glasses, about two feet from a stop sign. "Sir, are you okay?" A police officer was at my window. A small crowd stood in front of the car with that specific look of shock people get when they don't know if they should help or run.

I told you it crashed into my life. I meant that literally.

When I got out I saw what I'd done. Two large cement plant beds — destroyed. The car was totaled. My mom was on the other side of the city during lunch rush. I waited.

This is where I learned about civic responsibility. They did not give me a slap on the wrist. By the time the officer was done writing, I had racked up approximately $1,500 in fines. Failure to signal a lane change, which feels generous considering I crossed an entire street and nearly took out a stop sign head on. Expired registration — I had been covering my sticker with mud hoping no one would notice, and someone noticed. No license — I had a permit, not an actual license. No insurance, which, oops. And $250 to repair the two cement flower beds I demolished. Lesson learned.

A couple of weekends later my sister Desiree and I went to my dad's for the weekend — my parents were divorced, every other weekend was his. He took us out to a Chinese buffet. We sat down, loaded our plates, and the next thing I knew I was face first in a bowl of hot and sour soup. I have no idea how my dad got me out of there.

My mom's diagnosis? MSG allergy. Chinese food was officially banned.

Do you know what it's like to walk into a Chinese buffet with your entire family, smell everything, see everything, watch everyone pile their plates high — and sit down to a McDonald's bag? Because that was my life. My family had no idea what a neurologist was — we had to discover one existed first.

My mom didn't cry about it. She never did. From the moment I wrecked that car she was already moving — pediatrician first, then the hot and sour soup incident pushed her faster, and somehow she found a neurologist before most people in our world even knew that word existed. Once we had the diagnosis she wanted to know everything. Not to grieve it. To fix it.

When I first started seeing a neurologist he couldn't find anything wrong. An EEG is essentially being hooked up like Professor X in Cerebro — electrodes mapped across your entire scalp reading every electrical signal your brain fires. His was looking for mutants. Mine was just trying to figure out why I kept losing time.

My first diagnosis was narcolepsy. Except narcolepsy didn't explain what was actually happening — I was blanking out in the middle of class, eyes wide open, fully upright, gone. When we went back to the neurologist with that information everything changed.

New diagnosis: Epilepsy.

In the span of about three months I went from a freshman with a plan to a 15 year old with a diagnosis. Meningitis, a totaled car, a face full of hot and sour soup, and a neurologist we didn't know existed. Three months.

I was 15 and I felt completely alone. I had already felt like patient zero in that hospital room at the end of the hall. Now I had a diagnosis nobody around me understood and I didn't know a single person with epilepsy — except for one. That girl in Ms. Norbury's class. The one I laughed at.

Karma.

-Enrique

"Sometimes you don't realize your own strength until you come face to face with your greatest weakness." — Susan Gale

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