Third world epilepsy

In America, if you have a seizure, there is medication. There are doctors. There are parents and hospitals and therapies.

In Haiti, I caught a boy falling down the stairs this morning in an epileptic spasm.

My Haitian friend who teaches here laid him on his side and held him down. When it passed, he left him there to sleep it off. 12 years old, laying on his side on the pavement, being stepped over as if it happens every day.

It DOES happen everyday. Without diagnoses and medication. Without necessary funding and medical support, they do the best they can. And the best they can is to hold onto them tight as they seize, and to lay them on the floor until they wake up.

We do the best we can.

We do the best we can, in America?

Do we?

I held his hand until he woke up. I sat on the ground and held his hand for three hours.

It was the best I could do.