Eyepatches are in this season.
So, today at lunch, a little boy looked up at me and said "Pirate!" It made me smile.
I've not updated in awhile, but I suppose I should. I've had little to post and I've been lurking and keeping up when I can. Last week I had an event that I should probably alert my friends to.
I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. It's located at the base of my brain on my pituitary gland and it's pressing on my optic nerve. Last Wednesday, my left eye went on vacation and stopped working in conjunction with my right, and that was why I ended up at the doctor. I'm wearing an eyepatch at the moment because, holy shit, it's confusing to have double vision.
Tomorrow afternoon I'm having an MRI (yesterday's attempt was thwarted by the inability of the nursing staff at the stand-up MRI facility to start an IV in my arm after 7 attempts. *sigh*) Friday morning I'll have a consult with the lovely neurosurgeon I met during my weekend stay at North Memorial, and hopefully I'll have a plan to have my brain sliced and diced to get rid of this thing.
Apparently, if it's not too large, they can go through my nasal cavity and remove it. To say I am a little freaked out is an understatement...there's this whole thing about, you know, having my eyesight that I'm rather fond of. Laying out magazines with only one eye working fucking sucks.
The long story:
I spent all last week sick. Monday night I started barfing like crazy and I assumed I just had stomach flu. I took Tuesday and Wednesday off, spending my days between barfing and sleeping and not eating. Other coworkers had been sick also, so I still believe I had the stomach flu. On Wednesday, though, my left eye was getting weird. When I woke up that morning, it just was not working right, and I assumed I had just slept so much on it that I pinched a nerve or a muscle and it would snap back after a bit. Friday morning it still had not snapped back...had gotten worse actually...so I called the eye doctor and strolled into their office across from North Memorial at 2pm. They took a look at me and said "Uh...lets get you across the street to the emergency room and get an MRI done." That sorta woke me up.
I checked into the emergency room...had a CT scan Friday night, spent Saturday in ICU getting pumped full of sodium bicarbonate to bring some blood levels down...had another CT scan with dye at 2am on Sunday morning, and then finally checked out of the hospital Sunday evening at 7pm. They tried to shove me into the MRI machine at the hospital, it was like being shoved into a thermos, and there was no way I was okay with being inside that machine. There is no part of me that was okay with the tightness of the MRI machine there.
So. That's that. I'm having some pretty fucking severe headaches, I'm wearing an eyepatch and kids are calling me "Pirate!", I'm terrified that my vision is going to be permanently compromised, and I am just ready for this little trip to be over. I am keeping my chin up and trying to laugh it off...but inside I'm 18 shades of freaked-the-fuck-out.
All the information I've read about it so far says it's a fairly well-documented procedure and that most of the time it has a huge success. So I am going to try to keep a good attitude. However, it's still my brain and it's still scaring me. Oh, plus I get to be on a bunch of nifty new drugs...I've had gland/thyroid issues in the past, but now we KNOW they are being fucked up by my pituitary...I might have to control all those functions with drugs permanently.
I've not updated in awhile, but I suppose I should. I've had little to post and I've been lurking and keeping up when I can. Last week I had an event that I should probably alert my friends to.
I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. It's located at the base of my brain on my pituitary gland and it's pressing on my optic nerve. Last Wednesday, my left eye went on vacation and stopped working in conjunction with my right, and that was why I ended up at the doctor. I'm wearing an eyepatch at the moment because, holy shit, it's confusing to have double vision.
Tomorrow afternoon I'm having an MRI (yesterday's attempt was thwarted by the inability of the nursing staff at the stand-up MRI facility to start an IV in my arm after 7 attempts. *sigh*) Friday morning I'll have a consult with the lovely neurosurgeon I met during my weekend stay at North Memorial, and hopefully I'll have a plan to have my brain sliced and diced to get rid of this thing.
Apparently, if it's not too large, they can go through my nasal cavity and remove it. To say I am a little freaked out is an understatement...there's this whole thing about, you know, having my eyesight that I'm rather fond of. Laying out magazines with only one eye working fucking sucks.
The long story:
I spent all last week sick. Monday night I started barfing like crazy and I assumed I just had stomach flu. I took Tuesday and Wednesday off, spending my days between barfing and sleeping and not eating. Other coworkers had been sick also, so I still believe I had the stomach flu. On Wednesday, though, my left eye was getting weird. When I woke up that morning, it just was not working right, and I assumed I had just slept so much on it that I pinched a nerve or a muscle and it would snap back after a bit. Friday morning it still had not snapped back...had gotten worse actually...so I called the eye doctor and strolled into their office across from North Memorial at 2pm. They took a look at me and said "Uh...lets get you across the street to the emergency room and get an MRI done." That sorta woke me up.
I checked into the emergency room...had a CT scan Friday night, spent Saturday in ICU getting pumped full of sodium bicarbonate to bring some blood levels down...had another CT scan with dye at 2am on Sunday morning, and then finally checked out of the hospital Sunday evening at 7pm. They tried to shove me into the MRI machine at the hospital, it was like being shoved into a thermos, and there was no way I was okay with being inside that machine. There is no part of me that was okay with the tightness of the MRI machine there.
So. That's that. I'm having some pretty fucking severe headaches, I'm wearing an eyepatch and kids are calling me "Pirate!", I'm terrified that my vision is going to be permanently compromised, and I am just ready for this little trip to be over. I am keeping my chin up and trying to laugh it off...but inside I'm 18 shades of freaked-the-fuck-out.
All the information I've read about it so far says it's a fairly well-documented procedure and that most of the time it has a huge success. So I am going to try to keep a good attitude. However, it's still my brain and it's still scaring me. Oh, plus I get to be on a bunch of nifty new drugs...I've had gland/thyroid issues in the past, but now we KNOW they are being fucked up by my pituitary...I might have to control all those functions with drugs permanently.