Carpe Diem Indeed
Zero internet access at home is killing my livejournal productivity. Thank goodness for Town-Of-Carrboro Wireless at the nearby Open Eye Cafe.
So, what would drag me from my apartment into public to write upon my cobweb-ridden tablet?
I randomly went to participate in a family heart study at Duke Hospitals Clinic yesterday around 1 PM. It's the kind that only has two requirements: you have a sibling who'll also participate, and you call the number on the flyer.
Well, after filling out all the relevant paperwork, I had the first tube of blood drawn for the DNA tests. As soon as the needle hit the vein, I started getting static in my head, heard a drawn-out version of the sound of a television turning on, and I lowered my head, closed my eyes...
...and opened them again as three nurses were dabbing at my forehead with a washcloth. I had passed out, apparently. Not, I should point out, a new thing for me in times of puncture wounds (or, in one instance, in times of Saw 2), but yesterday was something special.
Because while unconscious, I also apparently had a grand mal seizure.
So, yeah, they lowered me onto the nearby hospital bed, took down a more pointed medical history, and systematically began taking turns panicking me.
Within a half-hour, I had gone from a study participant to a nearly-confirmed seizure-disorder patient. The doctor said they wanted to get a neurology consult, but since I was outpatient, I'd instead need to go through the ER.
I have no health insurance at the moment, and any hope of getting in the future sort of rushed out the window if anybody had thought to write down: "Patient most likely has epilepsy."
However, yesterday's tests etc. were all covered under the cleverly worded study consent forms: "Any medical problems that arise as a direct result of the medical tests during this study will be paid for by us." Whee.
Well, my mother drove over (the doctor said I shouldn't drive home), and I meanwhile lay in the clinic waiting for a stretcher. They'd brought a wheelchair for me, but the nurse in charge (we'll call her Keela Shoal) made them take it back, saying, "He could have another seizure between here and the ER, and we don't want him hitting his head."
Oh, Keela Shoal. You cared just a bit too much. See, Keela Shoal has a 30-year-old daughter who's had grand/petit mal seizures since age 5, and she and her husband had ignored them, thinking the girl was trying to get attention, and then later, the girl had tried cocaine, and that's not so great for a grand mal seizure patient, and she's sullen and moody and for a while there, the girl was even doing the cliched mouthing the medication and spitting it in the sink later.
OH! The medication issue. While Keela Shoal was telling me this reassuring story, she was also filling me in on the only possible outcomes of the day's events.
1) They'd keep me for observation overnight or longer, and the study wouldn't cover that...and thus she wanted to set up a meeting with a social worker.
2) They'd let me go, but they'd put me on medication for the rest of my life.
3) They'd let me go, but they'd give me valium to take when the next seizure occurred.
Okay, let's take those one at a time:
1) Keela Shoal heard that I had no insurance and no job, and immediately knew my future. She said that Medicaid would possibly cover an observation night, and after that, since I obviously had a seizure disorder, I could probably get on Disability and never have to get a job, but, she continued sadly, "Disability won't get you very far in life, you know." Thanks, Keela Shoal. I'm glad you've diagnosed me as an epileptic layabout so quickly, or it might have been too late for me.
2) I have never had a grand mal seizure before. I may have had a petit mal (absence) seizure during Saw 2, but I was staring pretty hard at rapidly flashing lights while stressful music assaulted my ears in Dolby Digital, so I think there was a decent amount of cause there. In any case, if you counted the times I've passed out with that head-static I mentioned (they called it an aura), you'd come up with 5. Five times, each years apart from the others. Daily medication that would, as Keela Shoal said, "make me tired all the time, but that's worth it, right"? No thanks.
3) The Valium she referred to were Valium suppositories. And they'd have to be taken as soon as I thought a seizure might be coming on (i.e. about 3 seconds before I passed out). A Valium suppository. So, as I said to my mother later, "I'd have to be like, 'Sorry, boss, I'm feeling woozy; I just need to ...um... put my head between my knees.'"
Yeah, I was a little stressed out. Making it worse was the fact that the study had other participants coming in around me, and the nurses --thinking that either I'd scare the normals away, or else that I cringe at the sight of my fellow man-- decided to pull three curtains up and completely close me in. So I was lying in an enclosed space with Keela Shoal raising my Terror Alert to Orange, and I was practically guaranteed to have a seizure disorder and all I could think about was that I had a two-man show to be in at DSI in 6 hours and if I was kept overnight for observation, Ted would have made a video for our team for nothing.
My priorities, it turns out were right on the money.
(For those paying attention, this is the Long-Story-Short part of any Kit monologue).
THREE HOURS LATER:
I was in the ER. Luckily, the ER staff got me checked in, into a room, and blood-tested within 15 minutes (instead of resident alarmist Keela Shoal's estimate of "hopefully before midnight"). I repeated my story to a nurse, a resident, a student doctor, and the woman who would wind up filling out my discharge papers. And they all said that I'd need to wait for the doctor. Well then, stop asking me for my story, people, if you can't do anything for me (grumble, grumble).
Finally, a Dr. Robert Preston came in, and the first words out of his mouth (after I'd told him my story) were, "Well, I don't think this is symptomatic of epileptic seizures at all." To which my mother said, "I like this guy."
It turns out that I have a very specific body type that reacts poorly to major traumas like a needle in a major vein (or under my kneecap), or like a jarring rap to my knee (or a parallel bar in the groin). You know, for random examples. I apparently on a good day have a slightly low blood pressure, and I'd only had a light lunch before the blood-drawing, and I'm, you know, mildly stressed out with my current life situation, and, oh, I weigh 112 lb after a decent breakfast.
With all that, all the blood rushed from my brain. Zero blood pressure. Lack of blood causes unconsciousness, and then it causes seizures. I just have the body-structure and circulation of a paper-clip animal, so it takes less time to get to Seizureville for me.
So, I'm okay. The doctor said I'm supposed to avoid, for instance, giving blood without lying down and raising my legs, and above all, I need to not be running on fumes and thus I need to eat more. Sheesh, friends of mine, why did none of you ever TEEL me I needed to eat more? Did you WANT me to die? I mean some kind of WARNING would have been NICE, people.
Anyway, I realized what my penchant for pratfalls is:
A Defense Mechanism.
Since a sharp rap in the wrong place is enough to make me pass out, I've apparently learned how to fall so I never have that happen.
My body is awesome.
Or rather, my body is crappy, but at least it knows it and has worked long and hard to duct-tape together the shoddy craftsmanship.
.
So, what would drag me from my apartment into public to write upon my cobweb-ridden tablet?
I randomly went to participate in a family heart study at Duke Hospitals Clinic yesterday around 1 PM. It's the kind that only has two requirements: you have a sibling who'll also participate, and you call the number on the flyer.
Well, after filling out all the relevant paperwork, I had the first tube of blood drawn for the DNA tests. As soon as the needle hit the vein, I started getting static in my head, heard a drawn-out version of the sound of a television turning on, and I lowered my head, closed my eyes...
...and opened them again as three nurses were dabbing at my forehead with a washcloth. I had passed out, apparently. Not, I should point out, a new thing for me in times of puncture wounds (or, in one instance, in times of Saw 2), but yesterday was something special.
Because while unconscious, I also apparently had a grand mal seizure.
So, yeah, they lowered me onto the nearby hospital bed, took down a more pointed medical history, and systematically began taking turns panicking me.
Within a half-hour, I had gone from a study participant to a nearly-confirmed seizure-disorder patient. The doctor said they wanted to get a neurology consult, but since I was outpatient, I'd instead need to go through the ER.
I have no health insurance at the moment, and any hope of getting in the future sort of rushed out the window if anybody had thought to write down: "Patient most likely has epilepsy."
However, yesterday's tests etc. were all covered under the cleverly worded study consent forms: "Any medical problems that arise as a direct result of the medical tests during this study will be paid for by us." Whee.
Well, my mother drove over (the doctor said I shouldn't drive home), and I meanwhile lay in the clinic waiting for a stretcher. They'd brought a wheelchair for me, but the nurse in charge (we'll call her Keela Shoal) made them take it back, saying, "He could have another seizure between here and the ER, and we don't want him hitting his head."
Oh, Keela Shoal. You cared just a bit too much. See, Keela Shoal has a 30-year-old daughter who's had grand/petit mal seizures since age 5, and she and her husband had ignored them, thinking the girl was trying to get attention, and then later, the girl had tried cocaine, and that's not so great for a grand mal seizure patient, and she's sullen and moody and for a while there, the girl was even doing the cliched mouthing the medication and spitting it in the sink later.
OH! The medication issue. While Keela Shoal was telling me this reassuring story, she was also filling me in on the only possible outcomes of the day's events.
1) They'd keep me for observation overnight or longer, and the study wouldn't cover that...and thus she wanted to set up a meeting with a social worker.
2) They'd let me go, but they'd put me on medication for the rest of my life.
3) They'd let me go, but they'd give me valium to take when the next seizure occurred.
Okay, let's take those one at a time:
1) Keela Shoal heard that I had no insurance and no job, and immediately knew my future. She said that Medicaid would possibly cover an observation night, and after that, since I obviously had a seizure disorder, I could probably get on Disability and never have to get a job, but, she continued sadly, "Disability won't get you very far in life, you know." Thanks, Keela Shoal. I'm glad you've diagnosed me as an epileptic layabout so quickly, or it might have been too late for me.
2) I have never had a grand mal seizure before. I may have had a petit mal (absence) seizure during Saw 2, but I was staring pretty hard at rapidly flashing lights while stressful music assaulted my ears in Dolby Digital, so I think there was a decent amount of cause there. In any case, if you counted the times I've passed out with that head-static I mentioned (they called it an aura), you'd come up with 5. Five times, each years apart from the others. Daily medication that would, as Keela Shoal said, "make me tired all the time, but that's worth it, right"? No thanks.
3) The Valium she referred to were Valium suppositories. And they'd have to be taken as soon as I thought a seizure might be coming on (i.e. about 3 seconds before I passed out). A Valium suppository. So, as I said to my mother later, "I'd have to be like, 'Sorry, boss, I'm feeling woozy; I just need to ...um... put my head between my knees.'"
Yeah, I was a little stressed out. Making it worse was the fact that the study had other participants coming in around me, and the nurses --thinking that either I'd scare the normals away, or else that I cringe at the sight of my fellow man-- decided to pull three curtains up and completely close me in. So I was lying in an enclosed space with Keela Shoal raising my Terror Alert to Orange, and I was practically guaranteed to have a seizure disorder and all I could think about was that I had a two-man show to be in at DSI in 6 hours and if I was kept overnight for observation, Ted would have made a video for our team for nothing.
My priorities, it turns out were right on the money.
(For those paying attention, this is the Long-Story-Short part of any Kit monologue).
THREE HOURS LATER:
I was in the ER. Luckily, the ER staff got me checked in, into a room, and blood-tested within 15 minutes (instead of resident alarmist Keela Shoal's estimate of "hopefully before midnight"). I repeated my story to a nurse, a resident, a student doctor, and the woman who would wind up filling out my discharge papers. And they all said that I'd need to wait for the doctor. Well then, stop asking me for my story, people, if you can't do anything for me (grumble, grumble).
Finally, a Dr. Robert Preston came in, and the first words out of his mouth (after I'd told him my story) were, "Well, I don't think this is symptomatic of epileptic seizures at all." To which my mother said, "I like this guy."
It turns out that I have a very specific body type that reacts poorly to major traumas like a needle in a major vein (or under my kneecap), or like a jarring rap to my knee (or a parallel bar in the groin). You know, for random examples. I apparently on a good day have a slightly low blood pressure, and I'd only had a light lunch before the blood-drawing, and I'm, you know, mildly stressed out with my current life situation, and, oh, I weigh 112 lb after a decent breakfast.
With all that, all the blood rushed from my brain. Zero blood pressure. Lack of blood causes unconsciousness, and then it causes seizures. I just have the body-structure and circulation of a paper-clip animal, so it takes less time to get to Seizureville for me.
So, I'm okay. The doctor said I'm supposed to avoid, for instance, giving blood without lying down and raising my legs, and above all, I need to not be running on fumes and thus I need to eat more. Sheesh, friends of mine, why did none of you ever TEEL me I needed to eat more? Did you WANT me to die? I mean some kind of WARNING would have been NICE, people.
Anyway, I realized what my penchant for pratfalls is:
A Defense Mechanism.
Since a sharp rap in the wrong place is enough to make me pass out, I've apparently learned how to fall so I never have that happen.
My body is awesome.
Or rather, my body is crappy, but at least it knows it and has worked long and hard to duct-tape together the shoddy craftsmanship.
.