The performance above of a spaced-out Someone To Watch Over Me is a late morning take, on the heels of a night that saw Luna cluster 3 epileptic seizures between 8:30p and 5:30a. It was a long night. We were all a bit drawn.
By noon that day after, thankfully, Luna was calm in the sun. A balloon floated to the sky over 3rd Avenue and 86th Street. Warm early winter light poured through our glass balcony door onto Luna’s “daybed” on the floor. This recording was the 3rd of 3 takes, all aiming for simplicity and space (things, fwiw, I wish on Luna, too, but to little avail).
Someone To Watch Over Me is a pretty song about a broken person. George and Ira Gershwin (with an assist from Howard Dietz) wrote the track for the 1926 musical Oh, Kay!. In the original Broadway staging, actress Gertrude Lawrence as Kay opens Act II in disguise, wearing a maid’s uniform, and sings the song to a male rag doll she holds, poses, and dances with.
Looking everywhere, haven't found him yet He’s the big affair I cannot forget Only man I ever think of with regret
I play the song often, to myself, for myself. As I also do with Amazing Grace, I never sing it, only run around the melody on the guitar. They’re both about attaining a certain self-forgiveness. But where Amazing Grace offers a two-way uplift (“I was lost, now I’m found”), Someone To Watch Over Me is the sound of unrequited yearning. For me, the simpler this track is rendered, the deeper it resonates.
Like the song, Luna is pretty, and broken. Her brokenness contributes to her beauty in many ways, especially since she remains (afaik) unaware of her epilepsy. Humans are conditioned (mostly by pharmaceutical marketing) that chronic conditions and diseases make those afflicted ugly. Well maybe not ugly, but certainly less pretty, and more lacking in life. Luna knows of none of those feelings, thankfully. I mean, I hope she doesn’t.
We only realized in retrospect the first time Luna had an epileptic seizure. We were down in Florida at my parents’ house, it was about 4:30 in the morning, and Luna woke up suddenly, shaking and whimpering. She seemed terrified, confused, and a bit manic. We thought she had just had a nightmare, a few of which we had witnessed in the past.
Minutes went on, though, and she could not calm down. I thought maybe she had to go to the bathroom, so I took her out into my parents’ very quiet HOA neighborhood. She walked briskly, without stopping or zigzagging or sniffing or doing any of the things that she would normally do to avoid walking in a straight line.
Luna careened around a few corners, skipped across a couple of streets, and circled back to the house, with only one stop to pee. Her wake-up call clearly wasn’t a restroom emergency. She seemed a little calmer, however, as we got back into the dark bedroom. She crashed.
That was mid-November 2022. About six weeks later between Christmas and New Years, we witnessed her first full-blown seizure. She again woke from a dead sleep in the early morning hours, but this time she flopped over on her side, her mouth foamed, and her limbs stiffened as she began paddling and flailing into the air.
She received her formal epilepsy diagnosis in March 2023, after a spinal tap, brain imaging, and extensive neurological testing. Luna has what’s termed “idiopathic” epilepsy; that is to say, her condition has no discernible root cause. Her brain displayed no signs of structural curiosity, and her seizures are not specific to stimuli. There are no situations we can look to avoid or immerse her in that will mitigate her condition. Annoyances like flashing lights and loud sudden sounds bother her, but they don’t bring on seizures.
She is now 6 years old, and will live under a constant threat of random seizures for the rest of her life.
Our flight up to NYC 3 weeks ago was delayed 3 hours due to federal Air Traffic Control’s restricting flights into LaGuardia and Newark from West Palm Beach. FAA's ATC System Command Center issued a “traffic management initiative” that was short on details and long on resolution. As a consequence of the delay, Luna spent almost 4 hours in her bag in the terminal and in the air, and the flight landed on LaGuardia’s Runway 31 well after sunset.
For the whole flight, Luna was tucked under the seat down at my feet. On final approach, I shot some footage out the window West across Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island, with the Whitestone and Throgs Neck bridges off in the distance.
LaGuardia 31 requires an approach over Flushing Bay that brings you down to 30 or so feet above the water just beyond the leading edge of the runway. It’s a nerve-racking or thrilling descent, depending on your feelings about sitting in a tin can traveling at 500+ miles an hour.
To be fair, on landing, planes slow to around 150mph, so by that point, you’re even well below NASCAR speed. And while “descend” is just another word for “fall,” an act of descent implies some measure of control over a falling. To control a fall is not just to control speed, but also time. The slower you fall (see: parachutes and long courtships), the longer you have to look around, make decisions, and brace.
In aviation, a cone of confusion is a cone-shaped area of airspace where signals are ambiguous and bearing information is unreliable. The cone is always in the back of my mind when I’m flying, as it can occur when a pilot is directly above a ground-based navigation system, such as a VOR or Tactical Air Navigation (TACAN) system.
Inaccurate readings, no signal, autopilot issues, and even navigational needle spins might happen in the cone. The effects are transitory, but a pilot needs to know the exact cause of instrument malfunctions, lest they correct for the wrong problem.
On our flight north, I thought about how Luna’s brain also has a cone of confusion - a space, perhaps, from where her epilepsy radiates out into seizures. She often appears to forget where she is, or even that she’s a dog.
We are still trying to gain Luna some measure of control over her condition. Despite world-class neurological care (in New York City by Dr Thao Vo at Blue Pearl and in Florida by Dr Sheena Sanil at Southeast Veterinary Neurology (SEVN)), and a 5-oral-shots-a-day regimen of Keppra (Levetiracetam) and Phenobarbitol, the seizures have yet to abate. They will never disappear, however. The goal of epilepsy treatment is management, not cure.
When she begins to seize, we give her a nasal injection of Midazolam, a benzo in the style of Xanax, in an attempt to re-route brain signals and prevent what’s termed “clustering.” More than 3 seizures in a 24-hour period is considered an emergency condition.
Keppra and Pheno are front-line drugs for managing epilepsy in humans, too. Their efficacy in dogs, however, is not as high. In the last year, the longest Luna has gone seizure-free is 3-1/2 weeks. Since her diagnosis, she’s had around 70 seizures.
With each successive seizure, Luna’s “cone of confusion” seems to grow. She is the same dog we brought home as a 12-week old puppy, but her development is definitely arrested. Her motor functions are also degrading bit by bit - she will stumble off curbs and bonk her head on furniture in fits of uncoordination. In the end, as with any chronic condition, you learn to recognize the good days, and enjoy them that much more for their ephemerality.
Joy Division’s Ian Curtis lived with epilepsy, just like Luna.
He was tortured with self-awareness, however, where Luna seems never to judge herself. Curtis died at 23 years old, 2 years after his epilepsy diagnosis. He took his own life the night before Joy Division was to leave England on their first US tour.
Mother I tried please believe me, I’m doing the best that I can. I’m ashamed of the things I’ve been put through, I’m ashamed of the person I am. But if you could just see the beauty, these things I could never describe - Joy Division, “Isolation”
In the throes of seizure, neither human nor animal is aware of the seizing, nor are they responsive to the world around them. Epileptics will tell you they have almost no sensations, thoughts, or perceptions during a seizure. It’s a state of pure (albeit perverse) calmness that belies what’s happening in their body. They become, in a way, the eye of a hurricane.
Then, however, they wake. On coming out of a seizure, humans know what just happened to them. It’s difficult for epileptics to shirk the feeling of being a burden, not just to their loved ones, but also to the world at large.
Ian Curtis did not lose his life to his condition. He succumbed to a trailing weight of depression, shame, and regret that would have been an albatross for even the strongest willed among us. “The beauty” only you see but never can describe is a lonely space.
The eye of a hurricane is not sentient, to our understanding. We name hurricanes, though, as if they have conscious pathways of decision making and action taking. Who knows, maybe they do act with intention. But if so, would they feel sorrow? Shame? Excitement? Depression? Weariness? Absurdity?
And she expressed herself in many different ways Until she lost control again And walked upon the edge of no escape And laughed, "I've lost control" - Joy Division, "She's Lost Control"
In the Joy Division song “She’s Lost Control,” Curtis writes of meeting a woman who also has epilepsy. She survives - and laughs alongside herself, but dies from her condition before she lives out any of her dreams. Epileptics are plagued by a loss of independence, such as being forbidden to drive or pursue careers that require unwavering focus and dexterity. It would be difficult, I think, to be an epileptic brain surgeon.
Ian Curtis developed a staccato dancing style on stage that mimic’ed seizures. His moves were sometimes subtle, but mostly overt nods to his dealing with his epilepsy. By consciously choosing to writhe and shake in ways that recalled his seizures, we can only speculate that he found some degree of control - or at least a sense of control - over his condition.
Epilepsy’s insidious, though. Sufferers are keenly aware there is a part of them that they not only cannot control, but will take them over with a callous indifference. When your body becomes a vessel for the involuntary, your sense of self must always be in flux. Conditions like epilepsy do seem a particular form of hell on Earth.
Nothing seems real anymore. Even the flames from the fire seem to beckon to me, drawing me into some great past life buried somewhere deep in my subconscious, if only I could find the key..if only..if only. Ever since my illness, my condition, I've been trying to find some logical way of passing my time, of justifying a means to an end. - Ian Curtis
Fwiw, this March will mark Luna’s 2 year diagnostic anniversary, the same distance out from when Curtis could no longer go on living. Caring for her has given me insight into what Curtis had to live with himself. It’s a rough head space, to say the least, no matter how much love you’re shown.
Luna’s epilepsy makes her, too, the eye of a hurricane, but she’s none the wiser to the chaos her condition spirals out into our lives. This might make her story tragic. But fate brought her to us, so I try to frame it as more empowering or inspirational. After all, she feels no need to be perfect, which, in many ways, makes her more perfect. Would that we all could live astride our flaws with all the love and support that Luna receives.
Would that we all had someone to watch over us.
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