One day, at a gig, our guitarist had a Grand Mal seizure. It was either his first or second. It came as a great shock to all, and thankfully, it happened off stage.
As a former family doc, I knew about post-seizure fatigue. They feel drained and sleepy afterwards. Even so, I never saw ANYBODY more determined to finish a gig! He was an amazing guitarist and an awesome person in general. Out of respect, I'll leave him nameless. But he, for a brief time, made us a quartet.
I had an interesting perspective as a family doc. Every so often, I'd prescribe a medication that would miraculously change someone's life for the better. It's not a cool thing to say....that taking a pill is the way to go.....I mean how often do you hear that message? Culturally, pills are almost the devil, as everyone wants what's natural. I kept telling people tobacco was natural, and had a remarkable proficiency at making people's lives shorter. The opposite can also be true.....sometimes synthetically produced pills can be life-changing for the better. One instance where this was certainly true was epilepsy.
No amount of yoga, dietary changes, or fen shui was gonna help an epileptic. How could they? They had a locus in their temporal lobe shooting off electrical impulses to their whole cortex, causing them to have a Grand Mal seizure. The root cause had to be delt with, and that meant a pill that could cross the blood-brain barrier.
Everything in medicine had a spectrum of possibilities and results. Not everyone responded the same way to treatment. Everything had to be individualized. So anytime you hear blanket statements like ("X" is always good for "Y"), then run for the hills! One truth in medicine: You can never say never, and you can never say always. There were exceptions to every rule.
So not everyone with epilepsy would have a miraculous outcome with a pill. But every so often, one would. After some seizure-free time, they could drive unsupervised again. This, above all, changed their lives. They were much more independent... no longer requiring the supervision of others. And they were enormously grateful! It was palpable, and heartily satisfying. That was the best part of the job. Yet, I couldn't really tell anyone. I mean....imagine saying "Hey, I prescribed a pill, and their lives changed for the better". It just didn't fit the popular cultural narrative.
Well, the heck with popularity, I say! It was a valid human experience that I learned from...and someone else might find some wisdom therein. Who knows. But in any case, I decided to write a song about it. And "Clobazam" is it.
I'm not being sponsored by anyone. No drug company has my back. I think I did reach out to the one-time makers of "Clobazam", just to let them know I wrote a song. They gave me a polite PFO letter. haha! The patent has expired, and now generic versions are available, so nobody is actively marketing it. So they didn't much care either way. Which actually suits me. Corporatized hurts my eyes! But just so y'all are aware....I've got no sponsors anywhere.
(Apologies to Shakespeare for my rhyming couplet endings)
I've mostly been out of touch with that guitarist. But I hope he's found a satisfying solution to his predicament. Either way, I'd gig with him again. Because I know that no matter what, he'll finish the show!
- Steve