Adventures in Medical Facilities

[featherynscale]

So, yesterday, triadruid and I were partaking of a late night Applebees dinner (because it's Kansas. If it's after 9 p.m., you pretty much have Applebees or Denny's), when I had some sort of neurological event.

I'd had a headache for a while, which was not alarming particularly, because I've also had sinus problems for the last lifetime, and I figured that was what that was about. When we got to the restaurant, I noticed that I was having a hard time reading the menu. I attributed that to the fact that the overhead light in our booth was out, but there was a street-light right outside the window that was all orange sodium and obnoxious. I assumed the halos and whatnot were artifacts of glare. But then, I started to fail at speaking. If you know me, you know I'm pretty good with words, so when I was consistently unable to pull up the word to describe a thing, and began to use the wrong small words, and slur my speaking, I was sort of alarmed. Then, pieces of my right side began to go numb.

At that point, triadruid, who had been trying to keep my brain engaged as I was fumbling, offered to take me in for medical attention. We spent ten minutes short of five hours in the Emergency Room. I had bloodwork and a CAT scan, all of which came back normal. So I really don't know what happened. By the time I had been in the waiting room about an hour, I was able to do all of the word puzzles in the newspaper without difficulty. I seem to be fine today.

The whole episode was very bizarre and I hope not to repeat it any time soon.

Comments

My input...

[mesniu.livejournal.com]

In early November of 1997, I had a very similar and terrifying event. All my tests in the ER came back completely normal. My personal doctor later diagnosed it is "migraine syndrome," saying that all the blood vessels in my brain did a slow expansion and contraction from one end to the other, causing the blood to flow more slowly to certain parts of the brain than others, thus slowing the oxygen flow to the the portions being affected from moment to moment.

It could have been that. Just sayin'...