Unscripted Story
So I'm thinking about what I could possibly talk about 45 minutes straight it seems kind of egocentric and I'm really really not the type of person to to talk about myself that long or talk kind of about anything I know anyways so I think from just based off that the last activity or I was talking about my epilepsy in Task 1 I figure I will give a little bit of a background about my illness and kind-hearted work came about and kind of just my experience is over the past. It's been about twelve years I do feel that there are probably a lot of people that could probably learn from my experience or even just hearing my experience might give hope to someone who's going through kind of the same thing as I was more I am still actually although I have had success little successes here and there over the past 12 years I did quite a few snags along the way and I'm still working my way through my illness figuring out what type of treatment works best for me and I kind of just in general what triggers my seizures and why the heck I got diagnosed with such I think I was 25 in 25 so anyways I'm in my second year teaching I was driving through the Starbucks drive-thru that lunch grabbing a coffee and the next thing I know I woke up in a hospital and or it maybe was the ambulance and yeah that was I when I found out I had a seizure and it was the first teacher I've ever had and I was driving I thank God nobody was hurt in terms of me you know hitting someone I was stopped so I think I was driving a standard which was the best thing because the second you let go of the clutch it's also I did not go far I think I jumped up a little bit so you know when you know anyone whose term in a standard 2 car jumps anyways it was a bad experience but in the end nobody was hurt and yeah I had some tests done and cheese and brain scans cats can summarize and I was told because I have no genetic history of epilepsy that it was a scar that was apparently left on my brain from a febrile fever L seizure when I was a baby I had a febrile seizure I think 1 years old and the neurologist said it could potentially leave a scar on your brain which if certain triggers are certain things happen it could trigger epilepsy and seizure trying to see what works and unfortunately I did not find a medication that worked for me and I still have not found one actually at the moment I had very bad side effects from many of the different medications I was taking I think I've tried about 8 to 10 different medications and neurological medications have very awful side effects in terms of just emotionally and just making me feel very much not like myself which I did not like you like you know quick to anger a little patience and I mean as a teacher which I'm a teacher part-time now and at that time full time but I mean I need patience I need to make sure that I'm not going from 0 to 100 I'm not I got to be in control of my emotions and these medications made it very hard and then eventually when I got married and wanted to start having children and was told that these medications have such awful side effects and could potentially could potentially cause birth defects so I was definitely not wanting to risk that so I made it my mission to try to go off medication since really nothing nothing seemed to be foolproof anyways so I figured what if I got to lose so I slowly weaned myself off my medication and I was able to be medication free for two pregnancies and thank God I had two healthy babies no birth defects however once I stopped breastfeeding my latest my youngest sorry I started having really bad seizures again and I was not able to figure out which was triggering them and after tracking my seizures for about a year or two probably the Year to you I finally realized that they were all happy in the same time month for me and he was with my progesterone was dropping and progesterone actually has apparently anti-seizure effects anticonvulsant effects so when it drops you know in a normal person that they could potentially have seizures and that point but for someone with epilepsy my progesterone is dropping with crazy just due to hormone fluctuations after having my youngest daughter and yeah it was just causing me to have seizures almost monthly so now I've been diagnosed with catamenial epilepsy which is hormonal e related and it's triggered by a hormone imbalances and fluctuations so now that I finally finally been diagnosed with his 12 years later I'm seeing an endocrinologist and I am just just next week starting a progesterone a treatment that I had to push push so hard for and fight so much to be able to find this alternative treatment because all the neurologist want to do is just put me on different medications and try different anticonvulsants without thinking about the side effects and how awful they are for me and how they've just have changed me and having two kids and being a teacher and it's just not something I was okay with so hopefully I am able to have some success with these new with this new hormone treatment I am really confident that this is what the cause of my seizures are so hopefully once I can get this under control and what's up my hormones I'm able to stop my seizures for good as of right now they have kind of been so unpredictable and usually give me migraines for a week or two afterwards that it's very hard to function I'm having them so often recently every month or two so I'm praying and hoping that this works I start this new medication in about a week or two and yeah it's been quite a journey of me just seeking out my own education and educate myself I'm the one that diagnosed myself catamenial epilepsy I was the one that researched it I was the one that pushed for me to be referred to an endocrinologist rather than my neurologist to didn't know anything about this type of epilepsy and yes if I wouldn't have been so I such an advocate for myself and if I went to put pushed so hard to find an alternative treatment I would still be on awful neurological medications causing me different side effects and I'm so happy that I have hope so thank you for listening and
Analysis
If I had scripted the story, I think I would have been better able to explain my condition- most likely leaving readers with fewer questions. With unscripted oral storytelling I found it easy to get carried away on a tangent or get off topic. After re-reading my written text, I realized how much pertinent information I left out and how much of my journey I skipped over or forgot to mention. For example: I am no longer driving and haven’t been for about 5 years due to having had no luck being seizure-free, and after being unsuccessful at treating my catamenial epilepsy using birth control, my endocrinologist was going to send me back to my GP until broke down in her office prompting her to agree to do some more research- finally leading her to find research to support the treatment I am about to start in a couple weeks :)
In hindsight, I also should have been more concise about the details of my condition and only told the most important facts or what I have learned over the course of my illness. I realized how much irrelevant information I shared and how much time I spent discussing details that were unnecessary, for example: why did I feel the need to share so many details about my very first seizure in the Starbucks drive-thru? That event had very little relevance to my overall story. With this in mind I agree with Gnanadesikan (2011), that “writing is generally done more deliberately than speaking, so finished written pieces are much more carefully crafted than a typical spoken sentence. Written texts can thus convey their message more precisely” (p.5). I know the idea was to do an unscripted voice to text story, but I found that hard to do when discussing something as big as a disability
However, if I had scripted the story, the little impromptu, personal, touches would be missing. Like my hesitations, my mistakes- basically any imperfections that make me human. The unscripted oral storytelling allows the human element of communication to shine; allows us to use emotions, gestures, facial expressions, etc, whereas written language eliminates those elements- oftentimes leaving us with a very different story.
Being that my story details personal struggles I’ve had over the past decade with a complicated medical disability (an emotional story), I think that oral storytelling differs HUGELY from written storytelling in terms of its effect on its audience. From this perspective, oral storytelling allows its listener to better understand their disability from their point of view- empathize with their condition. Whereas when reading it in written form, yes the facts are retained, however the human nature portion is missing- the part that causes one to care or have concern for one another. For example: my last appointment with my endocrinologist was so awful and disheartening, I ended up in tears in her office describing how frustrated I’ve been with everyone’s willingness to just give up on me- and it was this human reminder that prompted her to do further research and eventually come up with alternatives.
Although most of the time I do have a preference for oral storytelling when it comes to sharing information or details about my epilepsy, I do agree that “sight-based language (written or printed texts) fosters contemplation, analysis, and critique” (Hass, 2013, p.9). Case in point- sometimes when listening to an oral story one may forget an important detail they heard at the beginning of the speech, as they hear more information, causing the listener to focus on details that may or may not be important. On the other hand, with written texts, one can go back, reread it to ensure understanding, and better provide an overall accurate analysis based on the WHOLE story, rather than just the parts they remember hearing.
References
Gnanadesikan, A. E. (2011).“The First IT Revolution.” In The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the internet (Vol. 25). John Wiley & Sons (pp. 1-10).
Haas, C. (2013). “The Technology Question.” In Writing technology: Studies on the materiality of literacy. Routledge. (pp. 3-23).
Ong, Walter, J. Taylor & Francis eBooks - CRKN, & CRKN MiL Collection. (2002). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. New York; London: Routledge.
Schmandt-Besserat, D. (2009). “Origins and Forms of Writing.” In Bazerman, C. (Ed.). Handbook of research on writing: History, society, school, individual, text. New York, NY: Routledge.