Medical situation

[kumir_k9]

Ok, so if you were paying attention to the vacation update, you probably noticed a little something about a mini-stroke.  I promised a more in-depth description in a seperate post, so here goes.

Monday morning started out fairly normal.  Monique and I woke up in a fairly leisurely fashion carrying on normal married couple conversation while we went about the business of showering, shaving (me, not Monique), dressing, etc.  Suddenly, I just couldn't talk anymore.  I couldn't find the words I wanted to say.  I knew what I wanted to say, I just couldn't.  As you can imagine, this is pretty distressing and with sign language was able to relay to Monique what was happening.

I tried a few things.  We had an iPod with a speaker and I put it on in the hopes I could maybe sing, but that was no good.  I could hum, but as soon as I tried to engage the words, it failed.  I picked up my flute and was able to play whatever I wanted.  There was no impairment of motor skills.  I wasn't dizzy or nauseated or in any pain.  I just couldn't talk.

We decided to go see the ship's doctor.  They weren't open yet when we got there, but an assistant had Monique start filling out forms.  Word to the wise ship goers, don't get sick before 8:30 in the morning on a cruise ship.  When the doctor came in, Monique explained what had happened.  He ran me through a whole series of standard neurological tests, follow my finger with your eyes, stick out your tongue, touch your finger to your nose-my finger-your nose-my finger (while he moves the finger), walk on your heels, walk on tip toes, rub heel up opposite shin, etc.  Needless to say, being epileptic, I've done these a million times for different neurologists.  I'm pretty good at them by now and had no difficulty.

I was able to focus really hard and force out an occasional word, single syllables only, but regular speech was completely beyond me.  I was able to communicate by writing, so I had a pad of paper and pen handy.  The doctor diagnosed it as a TIA (http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4781) or Transient Ischemic Attack.  He wanted me to go to a hospital to have tests done (CT scan, MRI).  Well he was taking care of getting that underway, Monique headed off to find her family and let them know what was going on and to pack an overnight bag in case we had to, well, you know, stay overnight.

My sister-in-law Nicole came down to the infirmary to keep me company while Monique was taking care of our stuff.  It was funny because she started to talk to me, thought about it and took the paper and pen to write me a message.  I couldn't say anything to her to stop her, but she realized what she was doing.  *I* was the one who couldn't talk, not her.  We both busted up laughing.  I had no trouble laughing, just couldn't talk.

It's funny, throughout all this, I never lost my sense of humor.  In fact, I didn't really take it all that badly.  Even hearing the doctor talk about potentially taking six months of speech therapy didn't bother me that much, though I kep thinking, "Shit, how the hell am I going to LARP like this?  I can't possibly be Zephyr without talking a lot."  Ok, so maybe my priorities aren't the best, but I wasn't going to make anything better by worrying.  I had lots of family around doing that for me and my sense of humor was keeping others' spirits up.

The cruise arranged for someone to get us through customs and take us to the hospital where they rushed us through the line in ER.  Apparently the word "stroke" carries a lot of weight.  I went through all the tests again with the admittance nurse and she got me right into ER, where they proceeded to take all the tests again.  Over the course of all this, my blood pressure was about 130; normally 125.  My heart rate was about 75.  My oxygen went a little low once, but overall, normal.  I wasn't in bad shape, just couldn't talk, but they weren't taking any chances.

I got a CT scan taken about noon time.  It came back completely normal.  I saw a neurologist who put me through the whole battery of tests again.  He tried real hard to get me to talk and I was able to get some of the words out, a process that was getting a little easier throughout the day.  His final diagnosis was that it was a TIA, even though the speech patterns didn't quite seem to agree with that, but he couldn't put any other diagnosis to it.  He wanted an MRI, but the only way to get that was to admit me to the hospital, because in Canada, out patient MRIs are up to 6 months right now.

The annoying part of this is that they didn't tell me that admitting me would decrease the waiting period to days instead of months.  When I found that out the next morning, we decided it was time to check out and let my doctor handle it back home.  By the next morning I was at about 90% normal speech, just occasionally tripping over a word here and there.  By the next day, I was completely back to normal, well, at least normal for me.  ;-)

 That's the story to date.  There have been no further symptoms or problems of any kind.  I'm taking a daily dose of baby aspirin as a doctor ordered precaution.  I have an appointment with my doctor tomorrow afternoon at 1:00.  I'm not going back to work before then since my wife won't let me drive and there might be other medical directives.  I explect he'll order and MRI and an ultrasound of the carotid arteries.  I'll let you all know what happens.