Good Lord, Who Lets This Woman Have a Platform

 July 28, 2022

Bear with me, y'all. This doesn't ramble on as incessantly as the Silmarillion, but it does ramble.

As the meme says, One month later….

No excuses. I just didn’t. But here I am.

A few things have happened in the last month. I’ve changed my therapy days a little, so now I don’t have 2 days at the beginning of the week, I have one at the beginning and two at the end.

My transportation company has started not being able to take me to these therapy days once or twice per week.

And School is officially over, leaving me with someone to keep busy for a good portion of the day when I’m home.

Not a bad thing. I rather enjoy it. Though not the transportation issue. That stinks.

We are currently granddog sitting with our eldest son and his fiance’s dog, who is an adorably ridiculous dog that looks like a…well…he’s got corgi ears, a normal mid size dog body, no tail and super short legs. Like, oh…six inches long, max. 

See? Adorable and ridiculous at the same time. 

His name is Tuki. I love him to pieces. We also now match.

Tuki started having absence-like seizures a little while back, maybe 6 months. He went through several per week, and it was a big concern to the little guy's human parents. Nothing could be done. One day, he had several in a row, if I recall. He slept soundly for a while after. Now, his back half doesn’t always follow his front half very well. He kind of wobbles, even when standing still. His head is often moving when he doesn’t realize it.

Now, I never once wanted to have a loved one experience what I deal with every day, and granted, Tuki is a dog. But, he is our granddog, and yes, I mean that. In every sense of the term. I always knew that if my kids got a pet, I would perceive said pet in this way. It just makes sense to me. 

I think, however, that Tuki having these dizziness issues has helped me understand what I’m like, sometimes. I don’t usually have problems coordinating my limbs, but sometimes, when the dizziness is really nasty, I do. Or when the feeling of being one half step to the side of my body is being particularly obnoxious, I don’t do the things I think about doing when I expect to do them. 

This feeling is dissipating over time, but it still happens. It might always happen, and it’s almost impossible to describe.

Part of it is my vision, I know. As I think I’ve mentioned, My left eye sees to the right of and slightly to diagonal to my right eye. That confuses the heck out of one’s brain, having visual info perceived in that way. It’s not what I lived with for 43 years before the stroke, even though it’s my reality now. Even though I’ve lived with it now for a little over 3 years, my brain still doesn’t like it.

Part of it might be my actual brain. One of my therapists thinks I might have a midline shift in my brain. This is honestly the best explanation I have heard to why I don’t feel properly positioned in space most of the time. A midline shift of the brain means that the two hemispheres have been slightly pushed into a different position. This makes sense, as all four ventricles in my brain filled with the blood from my brain hemorrhage, and it took a while to get all of that out. The ventricles in our brain are usually just filled with spinal fluid. There’s not a whole lot of room for much else. So while this likely saved my life, it likely also had consequences. So I think that’s why I’m here, 3 years later, still trying to get a handle on where I am, in actuality, at any given time. My brain’s off kilter.

I find this thought rather funny. 

My husband finds it horrifying. 

I get that, though. I mean, it’s my brain this has happened to. His brain is still in the right place. I can imagine this shift would be a little difficult to grasp.

This has always been my way, though. When weird medical things happen to me (and I’ve had more than my fair share, for sure), I tend to find them funny. I had an ulnar nerve entrapment in my left arm, which I had to have surgery on, years ago. I looked it up, because of course I did. I needed to find out what the heck was going on, and how they would fix it. It turns out that the ulnar nerve is actually the nerve that makes your elbow feel all weird when you hit it–your funny bone, in other words. It amused the hell out of me that the surgery was to move my funny bone. I mean, seriously! I was having a literal task from the board game Operation actually performed on me! The scar is ridiculous, too. Now it looks essentially like a large stretch mark, but on the inside of my elbow. However, voila! Problem solved. I don’t have half of my hand numb anymore. Huzzah!

Another time I found a medical diagnosis funny was when I went to the doctor for circular itchy spots on my skin. I was sure it was ringworm, and was appropriately horrified. The doctor didn’t think so, though. So they took some samples, which came back with absolutely zero  fungal infection. I was told it was nummular (coin shaped) eczema. This is a form of eczema seen in men over the age of 65. I am female, and at the time, I was under 30. So, you know, that was hilarious!

I’ve had weird but non-threatening and non-contagious diseases. Some are harmless, like pityriasis rosea out of nowhere, and then I also got hand foot and mouth disease as a fully grown adult (most people get it in childhood–by the way, I do not recommend waiting for it). I had two more actually threatening and non-contagious issues, as well. My appendicitis was due to a secondary inflammation they never figured out the cause of, and I wound up with an ovarian abscess with no history of or current STD (which is how they usually happen). I’m also allergic to tick bites, which is a weird win. I can feel when they bite, and apparently develop a nasty looking blood blister, as I have a reaction to the blood thinner they inject into the bite. I feel when a mosquito bites me too.

Then of course there was the spontaneous intraventricular brain hemorrhage. Can’t forget that. Now that was a party.

At this point, I don’t go looking for anything, but I’m not surprised when something happens.

OK, wait. That’s not totally true. I was surprised by a silent UTI last week. When I was diagnosed, I immediately felt roughly 400 years old. Seriously, silent UTIs are something all in-home caregivers are told to be on the lookout for, because so many elderly people get them–and the elderly get different symptoms from anyone under the age of 65. The symptoms for the elderly are mostly confusion and mildly elevated temperature.

Well, my temperature had been running about 98.4 or so which is a smidge higher than my normal, but not bad. I wasn’t confused. Nothing but mild back pain until the morning of the diagnosis, when I got out of bed and thought my back had gone out on me, it hurt so much to move. I actually shouted in pain. Which I don’t do, as a rule, unless literally giving birth.

Off to the ER. I told them my symptoms–back pain at a 9 on the pain scale, starting out somewhat mild, worsening over the last two weeks, going away for one day, then recurring with a bit of a vengeance, and was given…a urinalysis? OK, why not. 

Doctor comes out and says “You’ve got one heck of a UTI.” I think I laughed. And then looked at my husband and said “I guess I’m old now, then.”

Either way, that’s all done with. I've now learned new symptoms to watch out for. 

Yay?

Eh. I don’t find myself too terribly impressed. Well, OK. I’m kind of impressed about how well the Keflex worked. I mean 48 hours on the antibiotic and I could move without almost passing out. That stuff was a miracle, honestly. Gives you a whole new appreciation for medical marvels like antibiotics. I mean, really, it can sometimes be an amazing time to be alive.