illness and a CT scan

I thought I'd give a little something on this, because there are several people that read this blog that I want to tell about this but I keep having issues that keep me from getting to the phone or able to e-mail them.

For the last few months, I've had a few health issues. It started in late March when I thought my allergies were acting up again. My nose was all plugged and I had trouble breathing and I was really dizzy with some mild head pain. After having a lot of trouble with it at Melissa's birthday party, I decided to try and make time to go to the doctor. Meaning, 6 weeks after it started I ended up at the doctor's office. If I had gone in immediately, it would have been a simple sinus infection. But because I had waited, it had spread to all my sinuses on the left side of my head, into my left ear, my eye was starting to swell shut, and it was causing pain up into my head above my left temple. I was given a high dose of penicillin (1000mg twice daily) and vicodin for the pain. After a few days I was starting to feel a little better so I figured all was getting better and I'd be fine.

On Memorial Day, however, things took a different turn. Since the infection had started, I started having migraines so bad that my left eye wouldn't want to open, and when I could force it to open it was droopy. Anyway, on Memorial Day I had a new turn of symptoms. We had gotten a new computer the day before, and I had gone out to get a desk for the computer to sit on that morning. I was in our room, assembling the desk, when I started fumbling things and having trouble keeping hold of screws and the hex wrench. Then I started getting dizzy, and my heart started beating irregularly. I stopped working on the desk for a bit to rest and try to get my head together again, and I noticed a funny thing with my vision. I had this cool zig-zag of flashing lights going across my upper right visual area, and above/ouside it I had really cloudy vision that faded to black while the vision on m other side of it was perfectly fine. I went to tell Scott about it, and started stumbling the entire way from our room to the living room where he was. When I tried to tell him, my words just wouldn't come easily at all, and I fumbled a lot trying to explain it to him. He decided to get pizza for supper that night to give me a break from cooking so I could rest, and while he was gone the funny vision stuff stopped and I got real heavy feeling, so I decided to lay down on the sofa. I closed my eyes, and felt my breathing slowing down and my heart pounding like it was jumping out of my chest. I felt myself sinking deeper into myself, and thought "it would be so easy to just go to sleep for a hundred years, I think I'm dying now" I felt no fear or concern, just peace and warmth. The girls kept climbing on me and smacking at me, talking to me, and just being pests so I forced myself to get up instead of going to sleep like I wanted so badly to do. About 2 hours after it all started, it was over and I was sort of back to normal.

I went to the doctor the next morning, and she said that it was my sugar and asthma acting up at just the right moment, and that my heart pounding was axiety because I have too many kids. She put me on Lexapro and sent me on my merry way. I took her pills, even though I knew she was wrong about the anxiety. When I went in to see her my right arm wasn't working right and my right leg was dragging, plus I was having some trouble coming up with the words and my head hurt so much. The pills she gave me made my head pain so much worse that even with the vicodin it was a 5 on a 1-10 pain scale, and I couldn't function. So I ended up back in her office, and she said it wasn't the Lexapro causing the problems and to just give it some time to start working well. I didn't take it for a few days and then tried it again, with the exact same thing happening again, so I threw away the pills. I also decided to get a second opinion with a different doctor.

My appointment for that second opinion was yesterday, and he was very concerned with all that has happened the last few months to me (especially the last couple weeks) and ordered a CT scan with contrast of my brain and sinuses. I was called today by the center doing the scan, and my appointment is tomorrow at 2:45pm for registration before my scan at 3:15. He is worried that I didn't just have sugar issues like my doctor said, that it was a type of stroke known as a TIA. He is especially concerned because I am still having issues with words not coming to me when I speak and type, forgetting things (like going to the Sonlight forums to read one of the boards, thinking halfway down the first page that I want to start a discussion about having a pet bunny, and then forgetting what I wanted to post about by the time I get scrolled back up to the top of the page), and my leg is still dragging a bit and I'm having trouble still with getting my right arm and hand to move and work the way I want. The pain in my head is less intense, and today I actually woke up for the first time with no pain at all and I still have no pain after 10 hours.

I'm tired of being sick, tired of not knowing what is wrong with me. I want so badly to just have my life back to how it was last year. I want answers, I want to know what is wrong and get it fixed as best we can. I don't know how all this will affect our decision to homeschool, but at this point we are still pushing forward with plans to continue at home. I can't imagine trying to juggle 2 kids in public school while going through a bunch of health problems and procedures and only God knows what else right now. I only know that we are supposed to homeschool, and the Lord will provide us with the ability to do it even through all this struggle with my health. Please, if you read my blog, say a prayer for my family. And if you feel compelled to, feel free to pass a link along to anyone else that may pray for us as we go through this trial.

Its funny though, on Monday I'm hoping to start a summer-long unit study of our body with some materials I borrowed from a friend of mine. I may be able to incorporate some of these tests I'm going through as material for helping teach this unit to the girls in a gentle way to help them better understand their bodies and what is going on with me. Only time will tell if I do that though. For now though, I'm going to just publish this and go make some chicken tacos for tonight's supper, and hope that I don't get too dizzy to finish supper.