Mud in My Head

May 26th, I passed out at work. "Passed out" isn't really the best way to describe what happened - I never lost consciousness. I was awake, and aware of my surroundings. I was not able to clearly communicate and my head weighed about a million pounds. It was not pleasant. Yaw took me to the emergency on the recommendation of the paramedics who came and checked me out.

The emergency room, in their typical way, listened to precisely two words I said to them: cough medicine. They blamed the whole event on some Robetussin I was taking for an annoying cough and said I should stop taking it. I did, and went back to work after an extended Memorial Day weekend. Five days total, and I felt A LITTLE better, but definitely still had weird-head going on.

I mucked through as well as I could, but on June 7, it struck again - and at work again. This time Yaw wasn't there, so Deb drove me home. When Yaw found out, he called on a friend to drag me out to the doctor for examination. This doctor listened to a lot more words, and even attempted to listen to some recordings I'd made of recent things in my medical life. Attempted, but didn't succeed. I wasn't clear enough to explain how to get the phone on speaker mode, so they couldn't hear it; so they didn't try anymore. However, they did come up with a diagnosis - vertigo - and gave me more time off from work and a prescription. I started the prescription, which basically just knocked me on my butt all day every day.

Then I reacted to the prescription. OH. JOY. Stop the prescription, go on corticosteroids for the rash, and try something else for the vertigo. Something else is Dramamine. Again, knocks me on my butt, but I have to take it about every 4 hours. Nope.

Up to this point, I'd been through heart monitors, lung X-rays, blood tests, and more blood tests. They did some of the simpler vertigo tests on me and said my eyes didn't do what they were looking for. They sent me for a CT scan, which - like everything else up to this point - came out NORMAL. Well, something somewhere is NOT NORMAL or my head wouldn't be like this.

Next step - ENT specialist. More nifty tests. Did those Wednesday. This time they made me dizzy on purpose. Only one of the tests really made me feel dizzy, but hopefully it showed them what they were looking for. I'm in wait-mode right now. I go back Monday for results with the doc and hopefully a plan of action. At this point, I've been out of work 9 business days. Working on FMLA / Short Term Disability. Not sure when this will end, but from what Ann tells me, it'll come and go.

OH. JOY.