- Wednesday, 2003-October-22
I take the day off from work for Shaula's appointment at Children's Hospital. She had broken her arm six weeks before so today was cast removal day. Betty is also with me. We have time to kill before the 1:00PM appointment, and I'm hungry and light-headed, so we go to Oakridge Centre to grab a bite at around 11:30AM. I'm in the food court fishing through my pockets for an Orange Julius coupon. In an instant I nearly black out and almost collapse. Something went very wrong in my head. I am confused, disoriented and have a massive headache, and struggle to make it back to the table where Betty and Shaula were seated, bumping into people. I almost throw up. I scramble for Betty's hand in an attempt to hang onto something I could make sense of. I can hear her but can't see her. She leaves to get food and I have an anxiety attack. I drink a strawberry shake, unsure if my medical episode was caused by super low blood sugar and hunger.
I make it back to the car and rest. Betty and Shaula join me a half hour later and somehow I drive to Children's. Finding a parking spot was an ordeal. Round and round I went in the lot looking for a free space, and round and round things went in my head. I have another anxiety attack. I survive the cast off and make it home and call in sick Thursday. - Comment
I did not suffer any major cognitive, speech or motor problems. Months later, still dizzy, I was able to skate. What I did experience is hard to describe. The best way to put it is that the stroke (for that was what hit me) affected my "sense of place". Whenever I was in motion—be it driving, walking, or, especially, as a passenger, my mental sense of where I was physically headed differed from what my body was telling me; the two were out of synch. Kind of like the jolt one gets when mounting a staircase in the dark and miscalculating the last step. My feet constantly dug into the hallway floor at my workplace, in mid-stride, because I would misjudge the vertical positions of my feet relative to the ground.
When it came to driving, the first weeks were weird. I would notice the traffic around me but had a so-what attitude about it, as if the comings and goings of the other vehicles weren't for real, surreal even.
I had a headache for many months and was dizzy, then light-headed, for a whole year, walking around the office more dazed than my usual self. Even now, I am off-kilter from time to time, but this could be related to my eye operation of last June. - 2003-October/November
I see my GP on Friday the 24th. He tells me to move my arms and walk around the office, fills in a requisition for lab work and an ECG, and has his assistant make an appointment with a stroke specialist. His diagnosis was a TIA. I get the first of my blood tests done a few days later, the ECG at the same time. Later, the results show a higher than average level of bad cholesterol. Everything else was normal. He then orders an ultrasound of the carotid artery.
Sometime in November, I see the neurology/stroke specialist. He's younger than I am. I don't recall exactly what was said. He wasn't very personable, and faked sympathy (or wasn't very good a showing it). He has me walk and move around the corridor outside his office, orders some bloodwork, prescribes Lipitor, tells me to take 325mg of aspirin once a day, and says I probably suffered a stroke (so I was now officially a stroke survivor). He also has his assistant schedule a heart ultrasound and some CT head scans for what ended up being a two month wait. Anxious months, I might add: there was a 4% chance of somebody my age having another stroke within the year. As far as I was concerned, a 4% chance of a bullet through my head while driving to work on Knight Street. - Comment
I was quite depressed at this time. Freaked out by the drawing of blood. Upset at the waitlist. Worried about suffering another stroke while driving. Or at home alone with nobody to call 911: time is of the essence for the victim; the earlier one is rushed to hospital the more brain cells the doctors can save from dying. Worried also about being cognitively impaired, and of course, not being around for the family. I recently read a sappy email chain letter explaining the true meaning of FAMILY: Father And Mother I Love You. Hokey, but entirely applicable to how I was feeling. When I read Robert Munsch's, Love You Forever I remember crying.
I'm getting ahead of myself, but I end up being diagnosed as having had a paradoxical embolism, a form of stroke.
[continued in next posting, Heart & Stroke - Part II]
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