The Untold Story

This reflective essay tells of the dramatic story of the discovery of nonconvulsive status epilepticus in a previously-healthy 11 year old girl who presented to our children’s hospital with confusion and personality changes. The piece also attempts to capture the striking divide between the emotion present in the room when she was given medications to abort the seizures and returned to normal and the sterile description of the encounter that lives on in the electronic medical record.