Seizure

Five days before traveling to Spain for a semester abroad, in January 2022, my sister María José (30 years old, Bogotá, Colombia) had her first seizure. Within hours, that isolated episode turned into an unrelenting series of seizures that led to an induced coma, months of deep sedation, and a hospitalization that lasted eight months. What followed after she returned home was just as devastating: six months of psychotic episodes during which Majo ceased to be herself.

These episodes resulted in multiple readmissions to the hospital, prolonging the uncertainty and the physical and emotional toll on our entire family.

Amid the lack of medical answers, my family did not turn only to science in search of an explanation. We also turned to religion to try to make sense of what was happening; in our desperation, we even considered the possibility of an exorcism.

María José's medical record exceeds 1, 000 pages. Dozens of tests and multiple unsuccessful treatments never managed to clearly explain the origin of what she experienced: an acute autoimmune encephalitis that attacked her brain and, at the same time, fractured the life of our entire family.

But this is not just the story of an illness. It is the story of everything an illness carries with it: relationships stretched to the breaking point, others rebuilt; caregivers who devote their lives entirely, like my mother; routines that disappear; and bonds that are forever transformed. It is the invisible cost of survival.

Today, against all odds, María José walks, speaks, reads, writes, studies, and remembers her life almost intact. Her recovery, made possible by an experimental treatment and virtual reality therapy in 2023, challenges what science once thought possible.

According to doctors, her case may be unique. But that is precisely why it needs to be seen. Because what appears exceptional could be happening, right now, somewhere else in the world.

*The images accompanying this story were taken almost entirely with cellphone, in the midst of urgency, uncertainty, and the intimacy of the process.