On Sunday morning at about 4am, I woke up with numbness and weakness all down my left side. I’ve been a bit stressed out (when have I not been?) and I thought it was just my body rebelling against too much work and too little sleep, or maybe too much caffeine the day before. But by 5am it was worse and I did something I have never done before: woke Linda up and asked her to take me to the ER.
Once there, they determined my blood pressure was through the roof and gave me “60cc’s of something-or-other, Stat!” in order to bring it down. After two days of tests (including an MRI and something called a TEE, where they stick a probe down your throat to do an ultrasound of your heart) they determined I had experienced a Transient Ischemic Attack or TIA. A TIA is a “warning stroke” or “mini-stroke” that produces stroke-like symptoms but no lasting damage.
TIAs occur when a blood clot temporarily clogs an artery, and part of the brain doesn’t get the blood it needs. The symptoms occur rapidly and last a relatively short time. Most TIAs last less than five minutes. The average is about a minute. Unlike stroke, when a TIA is over, there’s no injury to the brain. They can occur days, weeks or even months before a major stroke, and are important predictors of major strokes. In about half the cases, the stroke occurs within one year of the TIA.
So …. I’m back home now, on baby aspirin (to reduce the chances of those clots forming) and blood pressure meds, probably for the rest of my life. Still recovering from the after-effects of anesthesia – they had to knock me out to do the MRI because I’m insanely claustrophobic and again for the TEE, because the first time they tried with the “twilight sleep” they gave me the max dose and I was still fighting the docs as they tried to stick that tube down my throat. Turns out I have an unusually high resistance to anesthesia…. who knew. Not looking forward to seeing the bill from all this — they had to knock me out for the MRI as well because I’m insanely claustrophobic and that MRI machine was bringing uncomfortable memories of the Quigley at OCS — and who knows what the insurance will choose to cover.
Anyway, with the right meds, changes to my life, some luck and the grace of God, this will be just a wake-up call and not an omen.
But it has pretty much freaked me out.
Posted by onezero 
