Monday, December 29, 2008

My New Year's Wish...Good Health


Well, it's been a very long and trying year in a lot of ways for me. Since late April I've been seeing so many doctors, I'm up to eleven specialists and four hospitals so far. All anyone can say is that I'm in perfect health!

It all started with a sudden case of blurred vision, so off I went to the regular opthomoligst in April. He had me go for a cat scan, then an MRI of my skull, fearing a brain tumor. After a few days of nervous waiting, everything came back fine. Then my vision in my left eye went out completely, so more tests, blood work, another MRI, and started on a regiment of steroids, which brought my vision back to a blurry state in that eye. Then on to another hospital that has a nuclear medicine wing, thinking I had a form of cancer, but after testing with the radiation dye, nothing showed up anywhere. Ok, so now referred to a teaching hospital here in N.C. about an hour away, where I have been going every week for the past couple of months. More blood work, more tests, more MRIs, but nothing wrong. Except of course, I have lost a lot of my vision in that eye. So referrals from one specialist to another, arguments about whether I have a condition known as "graves disease", and that all showed up clear.

Now referred to yet another one, a neurosurgeon, who decided to do a biopsy to see why the muscles are enlarged behind my left eye. So I went for surgery the week of Thanksgiving, and what a job. Three and a half hours later I'm back in my room, swollen so much, and starting to hurt after a while, came home the next day and had to lay around looking like I had been on the wrong end of a fight, face all bruised. They cut inside my mouth for this, then went through there with a scope through the sinus cavities (of which I now know there are six) to get behind the eye and take biopsy samples. After a week I went back only to find the same thing, nothing showed as being wrong. More blood work, more tests, and I'm still perfectly healthy. The next step is they want me to see the chief of neurosurgery and have him go through my skull for yet another biopsy. I don't think so.

Holidays are here, so I'm at work last week feeling fine, and on the way home I had to sneeze. Out came a rush of blood, like pouring water out of a glass. I'm already in my pickup driving home, so I just went very fast to the emergency room. As soon as I drove to the door, jumped out and went inside, they were in action. Actually, I was scared, this was a lot of blood coming out of me. So they got me in a room there in the emergency ward, the doctor came in, and as they were getting my clothes off he told me "this is going to hurt, I'm sorry." Well, he was as good as his word, because hurt it did! I heard one of the nurses say that my blood pressure was 67 over 20, they started IVs and kept working, while the advocate got my records and called my sister as my contact. By now I was feeling very dizzy, and later they said I was going into hemorrhagic shock. But they got the bleeding stopped, and I was able to come home that night with a long packing and tube sticking out of my nose. It seems one of the vessels in my upper sinus had burst. All in all I was very impressed with the emergency staff, except for the one who was asking questions like, did I have a living will, and am I an organ doner. Don't ask me that when I'm laying there bleeding and scared to death already! Now I've gone to an ENT this week to remove the packing, another painful experience, he had to do injections with what was one of the largest needles I've ever seen deep inside my nasal cavities. But everything is ok now it seems, or at least I hope.

My sister got there, she had called my nephew to move my truck, it seems there was so much blood inside the security guard wouldn't touch it. Anyway, they got me home, got my truck home, and after 4 days, I finally got all the blood cleaned out. A tip here....peroxide will take out blood from the fabric.... then steam cleaned the interior, and now it looks good as new.

So that's the way most of this past year has gone. Eleven doctors, four hospitals, and about forty thousand dollars in medical bills later, I'm still at square one. Something must be wrong, but nobody knows what it can be. So I've decided to leave it in the hands of the 12th specialist, the Good Lord Himself.

Looking forward to a new year, hoping it brings good health to me, and to everyone around me.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Hon,

Your wish is your command...GOD is great...you will have good health this coming new year and many many years to come. I love you my Roger.

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