The Tale of the Tap (as promised)

Quick note before we get started, I added a gadget that is supposed to allow you to enter your e-mail address and get e-mail notifications each time I post, but a few people have tried it and said it doesn't appear to be doing anything.  I tried it myself with an old e-mail address and I agree...it doesn't appear to do anything.  I suppose this post will be our test.  If you receive an e-mail notification about this, please let me know.  Or, if you put your e-mail address in and did not get a notification, let me know about that.  I will remove said gadget if it turns out to be useless. 





On to the tap....so we left off yesterday with weeks of unrelenting, excruciating pain, and extreme, nauseating double vision.  Many people were urging me to go to the ER, but I was convinced that they wouldn't be able to help me, or that they would just tell me to wait for my appointment with the neurologist (which again, was 3 months away).  Even more so, I was afraid of the bill.  I was told that financial assistance was usually available, but without any kind of guarantee or knowing what the total would be, I was still worried about it, since you know, we could barely eat.  Everyone kept telling me that I just had to go and they would get paid when they get paid, but I can't stand the idea of having that debt hanging over my head and ruining my credit, which I had JUST repaired after a messy divorce.  After a co-worker made a comment that led me to believe I could possibly be let go, I broke down (no, literally BROKE DOWN) and decided to go to the ER. 






My mother-in-law took me to the hospital, and when I walked up to the desk the lady asked how she could help me.  Before I even got a word out I burst into tears.  The only words I could get out were "I need to see a doctor".  I must have looked like a horrible mess because she didn't even ask what the problem was, she just ushered me around the desk and into one of the triage rooms.  Explaining to the nurse taking my information the reason for my visit was one of the most frustrating things ever.  I'm here for a headache.  "Headache" is really not the proper term for what I was experiencing.  I didn't know how to explain myself to make these people understand that I didn't just have a headache or a migraine.  Now I do appreciate that she took me seriously, and even offered to turn off the lights if it was irritating my headache.  (I let her turn them off, but honestly it made no difference.  The pain was so extreme that something as silly as light couldn't even touch it anymore.)






I was put into a room and made to change into a gown, removing everything but my undies.  TMI alert: I hate wedgies, and I'm not about to go around picking my butt all the time, so my typical style of choice is a thong.  Now store that information away for a moment...  So this doctor comes in, this young, much too excited to be here bleach blonde guy, who asks me what is going on.  I explain my whole story for the 500th time, and how I have an appointment to see a neurologist but I can't get in for 3 months and I just cannot handle the pain that I am in for that long.  He disappears for a few minutes and comes back to tell me, a little too enthusiastically, that we're just going to go ahead and do a spinal tap.  He reviewed my CT and MRI and he says that's what the neurologist would do next anyway, so we may as well just do it now.  He tells me not to worry, he has done TONS of these before.  (Great.  Awesome.  Can't wait.  Help me please??  Somebody??  This guy seems REALLY happy about sticking a giant needle in my spine and I'm not sure if I share his enthusiasm!)


Blondie practically skips out of the room to go prepare his toys, uh...tools.  I type out a frantic text to my boss and a few close friends and family that says nothing more than "spinal tap".  Blondie then returns, kicks out my mother-in-law because we can't have anyone contaminating the sterile area, and he brings in this girl who is clearly some type of aide in training, and is younger than me.  Her job, and I am not kidding, is to hold me down.  Now, I absolutely CAN NOT see the needle or really any of the other tools that are about to be used to drill a hole in my spine, so I lay down facing the wall away from where the doctor is.  He gets everything all prepped and ready and tells me to curl up in a ball to give him a nice space between the vertebrae where he can access my spine.  I curl up in the fetal position like this is my job and I do it all day long.  He even tells me what a great job I did!  (I guess if nothing else, I will always know that I am good at laying in the fetal position!)  Next thing you know, he completely whips open the back of my gown.  Luckily, my arm was on my side, so
there was no side boob hanging out, but let's think back for a second to my choice style of underwear.  Had I known that this would be happening, I'd have worn something with a little more coverage, but this guy now has a full view of my entire back side.  I have never been more happy to be curled up in the fetal position in my LIFE.  I mumbled something to the girl, who was standing in front of me, about how if I had known about this I would have worn grannie panties, and she said something along the lines of "don't worry, I won't tell" but all I could think about was "YES YOU WILL!  YOU'RE GOING TO GO HOME AND TELL ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT THE NAKED GIRL WITH HER BUTT HANGING OUT!!!!"






Moving on...then the poking and prodding begins.  The doctor asks me if I have ever had an epidural, and I say yes, because I have 2 kids.  He tells me that this is literally the exact same procedure.  That makes me feel a little better, I'm a pro at this.  The only difference is that I'm used to feeling like my body is about to be ripped in half when this is happening, but I decide to cope in the same way and focus on the real pain, which is the brain pain.  Except that this girl is standing over me, with one hand on my shoulder and the other on my side/hip area, "holding me down".  I swear to you I was not moving a muscle.  I was practically holding my breath the entire time because I was afraid the movement of my breathing would cause some horrible needle-to-spine catastrophe.  I wanted to scream curse words at her and tell her to get off of me, but luckily she eventually realized that I wasn't going anywhere and just stood there and watched instead. So between being curled up in my tight little ball and being afraid to breathe, oxygen suddenly became very short.  I started feeling very warm, a bit dizzy, and quite nauseous.  Oh good Lord PLEASE do not let me puke while there is a giant needle in my spine!!  Why is this taking so long??  Somehow I made it through the ordeal without vomiting or passing out, and I think I should have at least gotten a cookie or a sticker or something for that.  Just saying.






So Blondie gets his torture apparatuses situated in my spine, and taps me like a maple tree in the spring.  (Yes, appetizing isn't it?)  He says my opening pressure is 44.  He then proceeds to drain tube after tube after tube after tube of fluid.  As he is draining, I can actually feel the fluid leaving my head.  I can feel the pressure being relieved, and yet at the same time it doesn't hurt any less, but I can feel it.  He then finally decides that he's taken enough and takes a closing pressure of 7, but tells me not to worry, I still have PLENTY of spinal fluid and I'll be fine.  (He is a LIAR, but I don't find that out until the next day.  Also, just for a frame of reference, a "normal" range opening pressure is somewhere in the mid-teens, where anything over a 19 or 20 is usually diagnosed as PTC.  On the low end, it is different for everyone, but most closing pressures I see are in the low-mid teens, and I think the lowest I've ever seen besides mine was a 9.)  He detaches all of his needles and tubing and sticks a bandaid on there and I'm sitting up again within about 5 minutes.






The spinal fluid is sent to the lab for testing, and it's found that I have about double the normal white blood cell count.  Blondie says it's possible that I had a touch of viral meningitis, but if so it's not one of those really bad cases that you hear about on the news, and it's going away now, plus there's nothing they could have done to treat it anyway.  (This is interesting, because meningitis was something I had wondered about when I first became sick.)  He called the neurologist that I had my appointment with, who confirmed that based on the results of my spinal tap, I probably do have pseudo tumor.  He gave me a prescription for my beloved Diamox and told me that it will deplete my potassium, but if I just eat a couple of bananas a day I should be fine.  (Again, he lies, but more on that later.)






Having had this done, and now having a diagnosis, I was thinking that I would be fixed, healed, possibly cured.  I asked Blondie if my vision would go back to normal?  He said yes, my vision should go back to normal.  There are NO WORDS for the excitement I had thinking that I could potentially wake up the next morning with normal vision.  It was like being 5 years old and waiting for Christmas morning all over again!  I was then discharged, with no further instruction other than to keep my appointment that wasn't for another 3 months....






That is enough for tonight, but stay tuned for The Aftermath, which is also quite fun and interesting.