So the first time I thought nothing of it. Left eye, moving a little slow, time to wake up, fine. The vision loss only lasted a few seconds. The next day it happened again, this time a little bit longer, maybe 5 seconds, stretched the lid and blinked, nothing. It was as if a blanket dropped over that eye and I could see nothing on that side from that eye. I mentioned it to Beloved and he mentioned going in to see the Dr at our local clinic. I said No, it's fine, let's just wait and see and I'll go to the Dr once we get home.
(we leave in 15 days! Gasp!NO!)
Third time was yesterday after a few days of clear vision upon waking. I woke up after a full night's sleep in a dark room and my left eye is completely black. Like nothing. I sit up in bed, rub my eye, try to find something to focus on and finally after about 10 seconds of darkness I see the light from Beloved's cell phone on his bedside table sort of like a small blue fuzzy Q-tip. Then my vision clears. No headaches.
This was concerning. What would be the next time? How long? Would it be for 15-20 seconds? Not good.
So after doing some research on the Internet (no they did not say it was cancer! even though everything on the Internet seems to point that way!) I talked to Beloved and he insisted I go in to the clinic.
I am in good health. I have excellent blood pressure, no heart problems, and not ever had to worry about anything serious.
Of course my mind went instantly to brain tumor. My kind gentle and handsome older brother died of a brain tumor when he was 18 and I was 13. It is my legacy to always 'go there' when something like this happens. Call it hypochondria. Call it self-preparedness. Call it common sense. Nothing will ever make that legacy disappear. It is as much a part of the fabric who I am as the color of my eyes. My brother.
...
I call our insurance company 24-hour nurse line and the woman in a deep Southern accent wondered if I was having a stroke. She kept saying "Do you think you're having a stroke? COULD you be having a stroke?" It was all very surreal and I was laughing at her. She said I needed to hang up and go immediately to the hospital.
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| he was only about half-way through though ;) |
She examines me, not having an OUNCE of English knowledge, and does the 'stroke test'...pushing on my shoulders, getting me to stick out my tongue, touch my nose. She sits down, calls Fernando back in and starts jabbering to him in Spanish. He says: "Doctor say you need to go ER. Now. She says nothing serious but three days long time you need to go."
So we message Doe on Facebook (nnggghhh no cell phone plan for the kids!) and tell her. Home as soon as we can.
Bribes....
Get to the hospital. Go to the registration desk. Woman behind the desk looked strikingly like one of the Monsters from Monsters Inc
(Roz I think)...
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| Change out the mohawk for lank black hair parted down the middle |
Beloved said, Can I pay tomorrow? and she thought about it, harumphed, rolled her eyes skyward and said "Hokay".
First bribe of the holiday season avoided. They had no cash box or cash register.
Go into the waiting room. Jammed full to bursting to people in the ER waiting room. We wait about 20 minutes and then I am called back.
BTW, I hate the way my name sounds in Spanish..."Keeeem"....(puke!)
Doctor examines me, has me do all the basic 'stroke tests' like eyes following a penlight and walk in a straight line. Got the tongue thing down but Fail the others miserably and am now having a serious headache and numbness on my left side (the same side of blindness).
Sufficiently freaking out now and shaking. Doctor says "We need to admit to hospital for tests. You spend night. Go now to ER. They wait for you there."
Get to the ER. Stand in hallway outside of ER and start shaking violently, teeth chattering and eyes threatening to cry. Get undressed and want to curse out Beloved because it's all HIS fault the gown doesn't tie in the back. Oh wait...yeah one of the straps is ripped off. My bad. Sorry babe.
Have an immediate CT scan (oops! Better take all those hair pins out of your hair! Sorry! Almost had your skull divided into quadrants by four vicious bobbypins and a CT machine!) and an opthamologist examination.
.....Here's an idea of what that eye exam felt like. Have someone grab your upper and lower eyelid and shine a lightbulb into it for a good 90 secs. Do not blink or face the wrath of a vicious eye doctor who will grab the back of your head and force it back into the machine. Then have eye doctor say you need to take out lentes but hey!
She has no contact lens solution!
And she has no contact lens cases!
$*%&
This is the Opthamology Unit of a major city hospital. They do not carry contact lens solution. Ponder that.
You recall the advice of your old eye doctor Dr M from back in the day
who advised you in 6th grade to
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| The good Dr. M |
Screw you Dr M. This is all your fault ;)
I haven't carried a lens case in my purse since 1981.
......So the precious contact lenses of which you only have one pair (and the other pair, your eyeglass case and your solution are two train stops back at your apartment. Screw you Dr. M.) are placed onto two red plastic lids which you think came from urine sample cups. Fine.
Subsequent eye exam is survived and you are released back to the ER.
The contacts which were left on plastic are now stuck to the plastic like a bandaid. You pray that you can peel them off under cold water without tearing one of them in half. (halfway successful one is left with a jagged edge like it'd been shorn with pinking shears)
The most awesome thing is...because everyone believes you have had a stroke...you are not allowed to walk. Like a sick princess I am trolled through the hospital in a wheelchair.
Go back to the ER. Beloved takes train back to go check on the kids.
Realize that time literally stands still in a foreign hospital.
Pray for the poor old woman who is screaming "Aye Aye Aye Ayyyye....Madre! Madre!" and the two patients who are vomiting. Want to throw daggers at the old man who is sitting in the hallway watching you intently as you walk past to use the WC. Fall asleep.
Say Adio brusque female nurse with bad orange hair dye job and hello short thin male nurse who upon entering your room looks at you with the most pleased expression on a face a person could ever muster. You can't really even get angry at him because hey, he's only doing his job and hey it's midnight and he's probably a little lonely.
Then you realize he's here to put stickers on you for an EKG and you want to throw the little man across the room. Female nurse joins him and roughly tosses you back and forth like a burrito peeling and unpeeling. And even though she's a bit rough you Count Your Blessings because alternative would be you and Rico Suave alone.
Fine. Get admitted to 'Neurologika Unit'. Have a truly bizarre conversation with a Basque nurse who has very little English language and looks like she could swing you over your shoulder and burp you like an infant.
Sleep like a baby ...awake at 3, 7 and 8:30 for good. Food services brings in a tray of a cup of hot milk and a hard roll. Realize that you have not had hot milk since you were in grade school.
Return back to the Opthamology where the same Dr is now joined by *4* other physicians who chatter loudly over your exam and act like thou art some wild beast from the Hinterlands. They dilate your eyes for a second time in 12 hours and sit in your chair and cry quietly, hoping to cry out the liquid that makes your eyes squeal.
(Female Dr says in halting English that I need to get my optic nerve checked when I get back to States. Okay.
So maybe it is an eye thing.)
Go back to your room. CT Scan normal. Eye exam normal. Time to go right? Nope.
2 hours pass. No doctor. Need to hear from Neurologikal. Emails going back and forth between the kids and us Beloved wants to bring them to the hospital but really, who needs to see their mom at the hospital?
So they stay home.
..........Borat
Sweet Francisco the quiet kind man who was the neurologist on staff. He walked in and said "You go next door for Ultrasound." Immediately your mind goes to Sascha Baron Cohen that crazy actor. When he says "infarction" it sounds like "infartion" and you want to laugh at him. But this is all sort of weird.
You decide that if you have to undress for this man that Spain is just a bunch of pervs but no, he just wants to pour gel on your neck and check your carotid. Which actually does sound a little pervy ;).
But the carotid and the ultrasound on my head (!) are fine. He lets me go back to my room and says, I need to wait to hear from the MRI for tomorrow. He says he wants me to spend the night again. I said No. He insists. I use the "I have three kids they are home alone" ploy and he looks at my husband and asks "How old your kids?" Beloved-who has never lied once in his entire life, sweetly tells Francisco that our children are 16, 11 and 9, Borat then mocks me for worrying about my kids "They are old enough".
I glare at Beloved trying to burn holes through him and then tell Borat that I AM going home. He smiles and finally agrees, tenting his fingers again.
Seeing as I am sharing the room now with a sweet precious Abuela and her visiting clan who stare so sweetly me and blink and point to my head, Bueno? And I say, Si bueno. It's all good.
He leaves possibly a little bent and two HOURS later the nurse comes back and finally removes my Buff cap.
I only had to cry and state that I am an American and that I can leave any time and that I don't care if he gets in trouble, if he does not get this DAMN buff cap out I am going to do it at home. Poor nurse comes back and takes out the needle. Francisco/Borat returns, looking over the top of his glasses and tenting his fine-boned fingers.
"You come back tomorrow at 830 am. You go home and rest and be back tomorrow. MRI tomorrow and you wait HERE for results and more tests. I break Law by letting you go I get into big trouble but you can go".
Go home, go to bed.
Up again. Back to the hospital again this morning.
More tests. Even though I took the train to get here, they insist on me getting back in the wheelchair and wheel me off to Radiologika. If the Spaniards have a poor reputation for driving, imagine nurses with wheelchairs. I nearly collded with quite a few people and a car as I was wheeled across the parking lot to the Radiologist.
....Banging
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| My heart goes out to little ones who need to experience this. Something must be done to make this experience go smoother for these little guys and girls. |
Imagine yourself entombed in a metal capsule. Your head encased in a foam-covered helmet and strapped down to the board onto which your body is also strapped down to. The table is rigged so that it enters against your will into the metal capsule, like a slim white aluminum garbage can. The nurse says "Now we play music" and you expect music.
What you get instead is what can only be described as banging. Thor's hammer. But no really more like a jackhammer. Someone is standing next to you and hitting your head repeatedly with the hammer and it's hitting the 'garbage can'. Or someone pulled the fire alarm and it's wired on the inside of your head.
Varying in intensity but not really frequency you subject yourself to 45 minutes of this constant noise. You are terrified to open your eyes because your eyelashes can brush against the top of the tomb you are in. The noise is so constant you start making melodies out of the underlying noise, the echo of the constant screaming in your head. You are told to lay still and so want to be obedient, but if you don't take a deep breath you're going to start hyperventilating and start getting all Ugly American again on these poor foreign techs.
Through the constant screaming and shrieking you talk to yourself..."You are an American. You are the toughest bitch on this planet. You are not going to cry in front of these foreigners. Get tough girl. Show them American stamina and get through this." (A friend said she had to dream of Montana and clear blue open sky to not succumb to the claustrophobia). Not knowing what to expect for an MRI, it was of comfort to know that this was what she had experienced as well in the States, and that the constant shrieking noise is par for the course for this procedure.
Go back to your hospital room and curl up in a ball and fall asleep. Feel like you have been physically assaulted by noise.
Woken up by nurse who stands there and pats on the wheelchair. Donde? You ask. She looks at you like you are speaking Dog. "Donde?!" you cry out because you figure that if you raise your voice it will be all the more clear. (Guess what. It was. Echocardiogram.)
Get undressed in an office with an adjoining room. The EKG tech's office and the door is wide open while he has a consult with a female patient. 'Senora' you ask the nurse, 'Privado?' and you motion to close the door. She shakes her head No, No. He's the tech. It's okay.
While you lay on the table a woman dressed in street clothes has a conversation with the tech and his nurse. Male nurse (thankfully a different one from last night glances at you undressed under a sheet and starts whistling a tune.)
Meanwhile a Spanish version of 'Nothing Else Matters' by Metallica starts on the ambient radio and you start singing along in your head.
"So close no matter how far
couldn't be much more from the heart
forever trust in who you are
but nothing else matters"
imagine that the woman singing Hetfield's vocals is the brusque blonde nurse with the bad dye job from last night.
EKG tech starts exam and gets real quiet.
Es bueno? You ask.
He shakes his head. 'No. No es bueno.' '
'Por que?' You ask, thinking Well shit. This day cannot get anymore worse.
He points to the screen. 'Aneurysmo.'. He explains that the 'septica' that is between your two bottom heart chambers is crooked. "Congenital" he says, but it sounds like 'Conhenital'. He says 'Treatment medico. Maybe uno surgical.'
I almost start laughing right there.
Francisco calms me down a bit.He downplays it. Says I still need to go my back home and get this looked at again. I envision myself like a superhero climbing the corners of the walls at this point. Like Spiderman suspended on webbed appendages waiting to strike. Poor Francisco.
Start looking up Septal Aneurysmatic Heart Defect on the Internet.
http://ats.ctsnetjournals.org/cgi/content/full/62/4/1190
This looks doable.
Praise God it's not cancer. Praise God it's not another head MRI.
Praise God for Francisco.
Praise God that I was treated in Spain initially for something that will run well into the double digit-thousands of dollars for us financially and walked out of the hospital paying nothing.
Praise God for socialized medicine.
I can say that because I am not Spanish, did not have to wait in a crowded noisy and dark lobby for hours on end, and was treated with respect.
Dignity is at a premium in Spain and they are losing their livelihood to pay for this service, but tonight I am thankful for socialized medicine.
To be continued....tomorrow we go to soccer!
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