Hey Y'all.
I'm back. How was all y'all's holiday weekend? Do anything fun? I started my weekend out by getting an MRI of my gray matter, and it could only get better from there, right?
I promised a detailed description of WTH happened during my visit to the hospital when they went looking for a hole in my heart, so here it is.
Symptoms: I've been getting migraines and headaches, and I've been forgetting words. My doc heard a heart murmur, and taking that into account with the other stuff, she sent me to a cardiovascular guy.
Cardiovascular guy: He ran a test called a Transcranial Doppler.
It looks like this:
(As seen only on the SyFy channel)
They put this thinger on, and then they shot bubbles up my arm. (This is not a euphamism or anything. They really did shoot actual bubbles up my arm.)
The bubbles are supposed to go to my heart and then to my lungs to be cleaned. They should not go to the brain. If they go to the brain, it means there's probably a hole in the heart. The headband thingee measures the presence of bubbles.
So, yeah, the bubbles in my arm went straight to my brain. Then they did an echo cardiogram to confirm.
Diagnosis: BUBBLE BRAIN.
(Okay, they really like to call it a PFO, or Patent Foramen Ovale).
It's a hole that should've closed over after birth, but mine never did.
Some holes are fine, but this particular hole means blood clots and "dirty blood" can go directly to my brain and cause strokes (possibly this has already happened with mini-strokes causing my cognitive damage... or maybe there's no excuse for my mental defects...) or it can go to my carotid artery causing heart attack.
This is the point when my doctor exclaimed, "You know that thing that Bret Michaels has? It's the same thing you have!"
At which point I thought, Um... Bret Michaels has so many "things". Do I really want to have what he's having?
(Bret Michaels. We're like totally disease twins.)
Then my doctor, who's a horse enthusiast, told me how PFO's are like Horse Colic: There's no one certain cause.
So, aside from the honor of sharing a disease with Bret Michaels (at least it's not the clap), I also have a connection to sick horses.
I know what you're thinking: How does it get any better than that?
Well, let's talk about surgery.
I go in on June 29th to get it fixed. They snake a balloon attached to a camera into my heart, and then they blow up the balloon on one side of the hole, and then the other.
I asked if they could leave the camera in my heart, so I could always carry around a little monitor and see it, but they said that's not possible. Cowards.
I get to stay overnight in the hospital, which I'm really looking forward to. It's like I get a night away at a fancy hotel or something, where the room service is automatic. It's more like a "swinging" hotel because I could possibly have a roommate I've never met before. Very exciting.
So, that's the long and the short of it. My only concern now is, what if I've only been able to write because of my brain damage? What if surgery takes away my sense of humor? (Which, contrary to popular belief, is not located in a bone in my arm. I know. I asked.)
So, that's that. I hope y'all had a great Memorial Day weekend. In honor of my hole in my heart, I'm hereby declaring Friday's to be "Free Book Friday's."
