So, let's back-track. To ... Tuesday. Tuesday I'm up a work, and feeling "out of sorts". Now I can be feeling "out of sorts" for any number of reasons, from having had my transit connections screwed up, or not having beverages of choice readily available, or whatever, but Tuesday, it seemed to be "just off" and I wasn't particularly interested in ordering in any lunch. I did, sometime after lunch, get up an go down to the Break Room to see what sort of "snacky" things might be in play there, and was hit with one of those "woozie" bits where it seems like you just got up too fast.
"Interesting", I think, "perhaps I really should have had some lunch!" and head back to my desk. A few hours later I turn around to reach for some files, and get "spinny head" feelings. This is Not Good. There has been a stomach virus popping around, and I opine "Gee, I hope I'm not coming down with anything!", but otherwise just let it go. The A.D. is cutting out at 5:30 and offers to drop me by the train (which is, frankly, early for us to get out), and I take him upon it. I get the train, and read all the way downtown with no problem.
However, when I get home and get settled in a bit, I find that I am dizzy. I grab a bit to eat, and tumble off to bed. I'm OK in bed, even sleep pretty soundly. However, when I got up to pee at about 2am, it felt like I was on the deck of a small ship in heavy seas, everything was reeling and I was bouncing wall to wall to wall. Even sitting down, everything was spinning around me an I couldn't hold focus on anything. Anyway, I get done in the bathroom, get back to sleep, and the same thing happens around 4:30!
At this point I'm worried,
cierrablue has posted stuff in her blog about the early warnings of stroke, among which are dizziness, loss of motor control, etc. ... a lot of the stuff I'm exhibiting. I wake up The Wife, and pass along my concerns, and she looks it up on the web. Sounds bad. We discuss calling 911 and have th whole ambulance-to-the-hospital thing going, but under our current financial situation, that could be an economic kill-shot, so we wait till The Girls are at least up and fed (they can make it the half-block to school themselves under these conditions), and we head out to find a cab about 7:30am. Of course, this picked a sub-zero morning to happen, so The Wife went off finding a cab on a side street while I hold on for dear life on the railings outside our building. Oh, and did I mention the puking? Yes ... anytime that I was awake and trying to interact with my environment, I started to heave what little chow was still in my guts. This kicked in about 2 blocks from home (in anticipation, we'd brought a trashcan liner) to the less than delight of our eventual cabbie.Fortunately, we got to Northwestern's emergency room right after the shift change and it was pretty quiet and we got right in. They plopped me in a wheelchair for the into interview (which was blissfully brief) and then wheeled me off to one of those curtained rooms that I'd been all to familiar with over the years of my Mother's decline. Oddly enough, they just wanted my shirt off, and then stuck me with the heart monitor pads, did the oxygen monitor clip on a finger on my left hand, and gave me an IV on the right. At this point we played a lot of "chase my finger" games an "grip" games and "press the pedal" games, all of which I did OK at, which started to counter-indicate a stroke. The only "odd" thing was when I tried to track the finger to the extreme right, my eyes were all jerky.
They bring in a few extra doctors who do a few more games and they huddle and suggest that I have a particular form on fairly aggressive (yeah, no shit) Vertigo, which could be bought on by a blow to the head, certain types of infections, or a virus. My guess is that I'd caught the stomach virus that was going around, and that kicked this off, with the puking being an aspect of that as well.
I had the option, on Wednesday afternoon, to either stay in the hospital for further observation (they were wanting to get my blood pressure down), or to go home. Since they'd both crossed off my biggest fear on this (that I was having a stroke) and took care of the symptoms (I have two pills for vertigo and one for nausea), I might as well lie around in a pre-paid bed at home as opposed to cranking up the eventual bill, so we geared up to get back here.
Of course, nothing like this happens easily. First of all, we had a cabbie who had No Clue about the neighborhood, so took us on some rather florid loop-da-loops as he'd charge down a street past where we was supposed to turn, only to whip into a driveway somewhere to turn around. I should have puked on him just for spite! Then, when we finally get home, we're on an elevator that isn't working. Actually, it would have been better had it been "no working", it would start off, surge a few floors, then drop a few floors back, over and over and over again. It finally opened up 1 floor below up an I stumbled out an collapsed on the floor of the hallway, feeling like I'd been through a blender, despite all the pills.
The Wife eventually runs upstairs, gets me a step-stool (to better extract me from the floor), and some soda (I was parched by this point) and we get up vertical, and onto an elevator, and into the apartment, and into a bed. The next 28 hours or so have been take pills, sleep, pee, take pills, sleep, grab a bite, take pills, sleep, pee, etc. I would, actually, be heading back to the office in the morning, but I need to go in to see the doctor on a follow-up, so that's at 11am, then maybe I can get up there for few hours.
So, gee ... how were your past 48 hours?