2005-04-02 - 7:22 p.m.

>Rufus Complains Some More

So hospitals are interesting places. I am fascinated at how much drama and humour happens in frantic spurts.

I woke up last Saturday with the right side of my face, tongue, lips and my right arm numb and tingly. Oh shit, I said to myself, I'm having a stroke, or a transient ischemia, or an aneurysm or something. So I went back to bed and freaked out until I fell asleep for an hour. Then I went to work and freaked out silently all day (still tingling) until I went home and went to the walk-in clinic.

Doctor: Spell world.
Me: W-o-r-l-d.
Doctor: Spell it backwards.
Me: Um... D-l-r-o-w. Right?
Doctor: Clench your fingers don't let me pull them apart, raise our arm don't let me push it down, push against me don't let me push you back squeeze my fingers as hard as you can stop flip your hand back and forth over the other hand nowfliptheotherhandonthathandfollowmyfingerwithyoureyesdon'tmoveyourheadstandupanddon'tmove...
Me: So what's going on?
Doctor: Well, maybe it's a virus - you have a fever - maybe it's shingles. I don't know. You should go to the emergency room.
Me: Uh, okay.

So Bee drove to the hospital where I put on a mask at the door (following the directions on the sign: Fever + cough? wash your hands and wear a mask), sat for half an hour waiting for a triage nurse, who took my blood pressure and temperature and squinted her eyes at me.

Triage Nurse: Why are you wearing a mask?
Me: Well, the doctor told me I had a fever (I said glancing at the read-out on the electronic thermometer which read a totally normal 37.6) and I'm just getting over a cough, and the signs, you know...
Triage Nurse: So you feel a numbness and tingling?
Me: Well, yeah, just on my right side. Um, the doctor told me to come here...
Triage Nurse: What did he think was wrong with you?
Me: He thought it might be a virus - maybe shingles?
Triage Nurse: (squint)

From there, it was to the registration clerk who asked me a bunch of the same questions and took emergency numbers and addresses and was very friendly and smiley. She put a wrist band on me and handed me my chart and sent me to area B, where I put the chart in a basket and sat down near an elderly diabetic gentlemen with white hair and a soft melodic voice. He explained to me that he had a rare condition called "chartot," which causes the bones in his leg to dissolve. "They just melted away" he said. "My goodness!" I said, through my mask. He went on to tell me about how he was part of the UN Medical Corps and served in Egypt when the French and British were battling somebody over the Suez Canal. "The Egyptians would place landmines where the UN jeeps were meant to drive, and we were always bringing in Norwegians with theirs legs blown away" he told me, chopping a hand above the kneecap on both his legs. "There was one fellow in my unit, rank of Lance-Corporal, who was checking the plumbing one day. The plumbing fixtures were inside the camp, you see, but pipes also led outside the concertina wire so that the people outside could have water whenever they wanted. It was a desert, you see. The Egyptians had buried a landmine right next to the faucet, and my friend lost both his legs." "Horrific!" I exclaimed. "Yes, it was. Sometimes the pumps would cease working and we would have to pump by hand, twelve hours at a time." He made a pumping motion with his arm. "You would think I would be built like Ahh-nold now. Ha ha." The nurse called him in, and he struggled to his feet, turning back momentarily to say "I'll be baaack" in his best Schwarzenegger impression.

Not too much later, I was also called in, and I leaped up and followed the beckoning nurse, impressed by how quickly I was going to be seen. Bee waved and sat back to watch the Waiting Room TV. The nurse took me to examination bed B-5, and he asked me the same questions that I had answered 3 times already. I had the explanation down to an art by now.

Nurse: Shingles? (squint) Do you have a band-shaped rash?
Me: No.
Nurse: Your temperature is normal. Let me check it again. See? 37.6. Totally normal. So you say you feel a tingling?

The nurse took a couple of notes and told me the doctor would be by to see me, eventually. After sitting on the bed, looking around at the various instruments and educational posters on the walls for about an hour, I asked if Bee could come in and wait with me. We sat on the bed and listened to the man with the dissolved leg sing a love song ("Two Little Bumblebees") to the nurses in a warbling old man voice. We chatted for another hour, when the doctor showed up.

More questions and hand-gripping, and eye-shining, and ear-peering. I mentioned that I was hungry and the doctor turned around and said "Nurse, get this man some dinner!" Within 10 minutes, I had tea and vegetables and mashed potatoes and a bun and butter and a nanaimo bar (and a couple slabs of honey-garlic chicken, which I didn't eat, of course, being a quasi-vegetarian). The doctor gave me some quizzical looks and sent me out to get a CT scan (computed tomography: a bunch of x-ray slices of the brain integrated into a 3D image by computer).

"Well, Rufus, your brain looks alright, but that makes things a little confusing. There's a whole list of possible problems that could give you these symptoms, like MS, but that's pretty far down the list. My best guess is that you are probably having a migraine aura. You said that you've had a full-blown migraine before? Well, this would be typical of a cluster migraine, though I don't see why you don't have a headache. If that's the case, it should go away pretty quickly. Anyway, go home, take care of yourself, see your family doctor this week, and come back if it gets worse. Bye!"

A relieved drive home. A night of sleep. I wake up, feeling normal, start writing this, then my hand begins to tingle and ache halfway through. My whole arm aches for the rest of the day. The doctor calls me at home to check up on me, and I tell him this.

"That's concerning. Hmm. Well, I would refer you to our neurologist for MRIs, but the neurologist on staff right now has no office, so I can't actually refer you to him. Well, come in if it gets worse and we'll get some more tests done."

Next day: more tingling, and neck pain now.

Next day: Tingling, neck pain, fatigue.

Next day: I start feeling better, and finally get in to see my family doctor.

"Let's just wait-and-see on this. If the symptoms seem to be going away, then we can hopefully just write this up as one of those mysterious things that sometimes happen. Come see me next week."

Next day: Less tingling, no neck pain, my eye starts to hurt, feels swollen and weird.

And so on and so on.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you all know what was going on. I haven't abandoned diaryland - I'm just having some crappy life experiences right now and it's been hard to force myself to write. I've been laying on couches watching sitcoms and DVDs. And dropping weight. Lost ten pounds sitting still. How do you like that?

Anyway, I miss all of you. Keep updating so I have something to read. Stopping now. Gonna lie down.