or, "How to Have a Stroke Without That Twisty Arm Thing."

Realized I haven't mentioned my ER visit of a few weeks ago. Funny story…

It started on a Tuesday afternoon in mid-March when I started seeing spots, like I'd been looking up at the sun. Not a lot of suns in my office, though. It stayed with me, making it difficult to work and giving me a headache trying to focus through. I went out for a walk and it cleared up. That night at home I got another killer headache and went to bed around 8, very unusual for me. Both the bedtime and the headache; I rarely get headaches at all without obvious reasons, such as weather pressure changes or large men with pipe wrenches.

The next day at work I started getting blurry vision and suddenly, in the middle of writing an e-mail, I couldn't type. Couldn't string together words, couldn't spell anything. I rewrote the same sentence six times (badly) before banging the keyboard and leaving. Outside I started hyperventilating. I called Teres, who told me to get to the ER. By that point I wasn't up to driving, Teres called a friend of ours that works with me and she came out, found me, and took me to emergency.

By the time I got there I couldn't recite my SS number or birthday. After that, I'm really fuzzy. I know I got an IV but I don't remember it. Ditto for my morphine. I don't remember much of the next 12 hours, in fact; I remember Teres showing up pretty early and my kids coming by later that night. Teres was trying to convince the ER doctor that I wasn't on drugs and that I had been acting confused. I don't remember much of this since earlier Teres had harassed a nurse into calling the doctor and providing me with morphine. He kept acting like he was going to make me leave before Teres and her brother Rodger essentially dragged him in and made him examine me. He admitted me pretty soon after that.

My youngest, James, was a bit freaked out as he's never seen me… well, anything besides calm or laughing, really. The boys showed up with my brother-in-law Rodger just as the stuff was wearing off and Teres was starting to crack, not the most comforting time to walk in. I gather I wasn't at my best. My oldest, Tony, stayed all night and most of the morning Thursday, keeping Teres company and cracking jokes with me. ("Hey, if they have to operate on your head, at least they won't have to shave much!")

They gave me a CT scan that night and followed it up the next day with an MRI, an ultrasound, an EEG, a EKG, bloodwork, and an MRA (an MRI that's aimed at your neck). I talked to about 6 different doctors at various times. You know, I just wrote a column about "House" a few weeks before, talk about a wasted opportunity…

Meanwhile, after the pain part calmed down, we got to enjoy the wonders of a busy ER in Daytona Beach during Spring Break. Lots of homeless, a couple of Breakers who walked out in front of a car and seemed peeved about it ("Look! I can move my head! Can we go home?" "Stop that, you want to end up like Chris Reeve?"), an old lady that fell on the city bus and kept asking about insurance and how to sue them, the guy I ultimately shared a room with who has bleeding in his brain and needed constant morphine, although his doctors didn't seem to agree, and the guy in the room next to us who was a convict who broke his back and had a police guard checking through his food even though his door was open and we could see him all the time. Also got an excellent example of why our hospital needs to expand: I was in emergency for 32 hours before I got a room, and then I was discharged the next day. Nurses were coming back in on shift and saying, "Are you still here?"

All the way through this Teres stayed by me. She didn't sleep, not until 35 hours later when I had a room and we could rest. And then the nurse on that floor made her leave two hours later, even though several nurses had come and gone and smiled at her. Ah, well. She needed the rest. She went home, slept a few hours, showered, and grabbed some stuff to bring back in the morning. We spent the day making fun of television and laughing at, pretty much, everything, before I finally got released. I am still in awe of how she kept upright and joking the whole time.

She said now I can be the grownup and she's going to go sleep for a week, and I think she deserves it. All I know is that she is the only person on the planet that could get me through three days of hell and keep both of us laughing most of the time.

The upshot seems to be that I had plaque in my carotid artery, restricting the bloodflow to my brain and causing stroke-like symptoms but without the crippling aftereffects. If you're going to have a stroke, that's the way to do it, I guess. According to the docs my buildup isn't dangerous enough at the moment to make operating a worthwhile risk, but I'll be going to my doctor next week to follow up. And I have to take an aspirin every day now. They even gave me a prescription for aspirin.

Got the results of my lipids test back. My cholesterol and triglycerides are borderline high and high, respectfully. High enough to modify my diet, not high enough to warrant medication. My cholesterol is 227 (should be under 200) and my trigylcerides are 211 (should be under 150, borderline high is under 199). I've been told to lose 10 lbs in 3 months, which is far better than I was expecting. HDL and LDL levels are right on the edges of where they should be.

So now we're still going to fast food places regularly but I'm discovering the rest of the menu aside from the one or two things I used to get at each one religiously. I like Subway's salads but they're pricey. McDonald's Cobb salad isn't bad if you pick off the raw bacony bit things. Pizza Hut's side salad was surprisingly good, and Gina's (where I get most of my lunches) has a Cobb salad that can feed a family of four, with their dog. If nothing else it's fun watching people go by the office and do a double take after seeing my put green things in my mouth.

And that's my health update.