It started when I was doing some video editing. I was playing a clip when suddenly in my left ear, the sounds I was listening to became metallic and ringing. I remember thinking "cool" for just a second and then changing my mind and thinking "this is not right." I quickly noticed that it was not just my ear and that my whole left side from my neck down my toes was beginning to feel numb and like pins and needles. With the aural effect it was quite otherworldly. I looked at my watch and it was 12:15. I thought, "this is only on the left side I wonder if this is related to stroke. Am I having a stroke?" I walked over to my favorite overstuffed chair to sit down and see if this would pass. I assumed this was some sort of weird of effect from my chemotherapy just kicking in at this late moment. I started looking through my cell phone directory to see if I could find Dr. Scott's phone number in my cell phone. But for some strange reason my oncologist is not in there nor is his office or anybody else I can think of that was affiliated with the Lacks Cancer Center.
Just then my cell phone rang and it was a friend whom I had not spoken to in a long time and who had a serious professional issue to discuss. I thought about saying, "this is not a good time. I'm experiencing a weird medical thing right now." but I thought that would be a little bit TMI strange and so I decided to just listen instead. By the end of the conversation I'd pretty much felt back to normal. So, being a guy, I decided I would just press on with my day as if nothing had happened.
At 1:45 I went into work, being 15 minutes late for my meeting. Class started at 3:30 PM and seemed to be going well and I had nothing unusual to report until 4:15 when once again that ringing in my ear told me I was going to have another one of these spells. Again, my first impression was, "wow this is kind of trippy" and then my second impression was, "I better sit down and figure out what to do because I have a class full of kids who needed me to help them with the scene that we were shooting."
I went out in the hallway and sat down on one of the comfortable couches and quickly decided that I better call the doctor. I could remember the first three digits, 685, but I couldn't remember the last four but I thought it ended in 00. So I tried several combinations getting various other doctor's offices until I hit the Lacks cancer center operator. I relayed my symptoms and my cell phone number and was told they would call me back in a few minutes to tell me what to do. I went back in the class and helped them a little bit more, still feeling kind of otherworldly. My phone rang a couple minutes later and I ducked back out into the hall.
"Get thee to an emergency room right away".
Being only a couple of blocks away and being a guy, it seemed right at the time to drive myself there. After all, I only need my left foot for the clutch and who needs a lot of clutch. If I could walk I could surely pushing the pedal.
As it turns out, when you have stroke symptoms people take that very seriously in an emergency room and they got me in quicker than I've ever been taken into emergency room before. I was being wheeled in for a CT scan only moments after they took all my vital information. I attempted a couple of calls to Mary at work and on her cell phone and managed to squeeze one into Abby just before I got to Radiation. The dude running the CAT scan machine and I are very familiar to each other as he's the one who originally discovered that I was allergic contrast dye so we are kind of friends that sort of level.
Abby was only a few blocks away so shortly after they wheeled me into a regular room, Abby showed up with a smile and the news that she had gotten into a little fender bender as someone had rear ended her at a stoplight earlier in the day. Her car was still drivable but would need some body work.
I talkative neurologist entered the room and proclaimed the CT scan to look good and they were going to run me through a whole battery of tests. He described all kinds of things it could be, most fitting in the description of TIA or a mini form of stroke. TIAs in themselves do no damage but they're often the forerunner of a real stroke which does actually do some damage to the brain. The fact that I've had two of them made me a high-risk and I was told that I would probably be spending the night for observation. They accessed my port so they could draw some blood, which I appreciated having one less arm poke.
Abby stayed with me until Mary got there and a tall funny nurse explained that she was soon to be replaced by a shorter, less funny nurse.
It seemed like forever before they finally wheeled me up into a room in the main part of the hospital. By this time I was starving and the kitchen in the hospital was closed so Mary ran out for some wonderful Thai take-out food for us to share. Peanut curry rice noodles with green beans and carrots.
About seven or eight times throughout the evening I received multiple variations of a neurology test where they make me pinch their fingers and raise my legs and smile and close my eyes and all kinds of things to prove that I wasn't having a stroke or experiencing aftereffects at that very moment. I passed all of them with flying colors; even the trick questions.
In my hospital room I was introduced to Dr. Victory, a very wonderful internal medicine doctor who talked with me for a long time, explained lots of things and demonstrated her expertise and sensitivity in lots of subjects. She introduced the two big tests I still had to do for the complete work up; an MRI of the brain and some ultrasound pictures of my carotid arteries. I was scheduled for 10 pm.
I was totally enjoying conversing with my PCA (who smelled wonderful) and my cool RN with a background in Oncology (whose constant interruptions from others demonstrated that she was clearly a boss of some kind) when it was time to get wheeled down for the MRI. I had declined sedatives for the MRI and was kind of regretting that, thinking a nice buzz would feel pretty good.
Down in radiology Kylieigh, the sweet-smelling PCA, pushed me past a doorway and I heard a woman say, "Mr. Peterson?". It was Amanda, the kooky ultrasound technician. She short-stopped me insisting that it was ultrasound first, MRI second. Kyleigh gave me up and my neck was soon slathered with ultrasound goo. For 45 minutes, Amanda ran her thingee up and down my neck, recording pictures and audio snapshots of gushing blood that I could hear amplified in the room. She would occasionally warn me not to fall asleep.
She was finally finished at about 11pm and wheeled me into a hallway outside of the MRI rooms. But it was a ghost town. There was not a soul to be found. It looked closed up for the night so she wheeled me back to my regular hospital room. MRI would have to wait until tomorrow.
I had another helping of peanut curry and settled into bed. All my technology had dead batteries so I found a crappy movie on TV (Indiana Jones and the I'll-advised Association with Shia Laboef) and let it put me to sleep. They warned me they would be waking me every two hours to test me but thankfully they were slacking. I think I was waked up once.
So it is almost noon on Saturday and no MRI or news of MRI. I am completely disappointing and healthy to everyone who tests me. I've got new RNs and PCAs and Mary swung by to drop off my bevy of power supplies (bless her) so I am plugged in again to my social media and blog.
And that is the sum of my story up to date. I'm perfectly healthy and this seems like too much fuss.
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