Progress
I began writing this last Wednesday (April 23) so please excuse me if I missed changing the tense or the day of something (ex: "I was there today" vs "I went there yesterday")
My allergies have been absolutely killer these days, but I've been managing them more or less with non-stop doses of an allergy pill as well as a decongestant. As soon as they begin to wear off I can tell. It's crazy, but still manageable. Wednesday morning I woke up and felt like death was pouring from my sinuses. I sounded like the stereotypical person with a cold or whatever on those those commercials. I was miserable and I couldn't bring myself to uncurl from a little ball in bed. So I made an appointment with Dr. P to see if I was developing a sinus infection because it was pretty obvious things were getting worse. Now I have an antibiotic to get rid of the yuck. I'm really hoping it works and that it was an infection making my allergies OUT OF CONTROL the last month and a half because the alternative is having to deal with the unbearable goopy itchiness indefinitely. I have seriously never had allergies like these! Crazy! The final solution for my allergies was essential oils. I'll have to talk about them later because I just can't get over how much they helped me! I went from not being able to breathe for 2 months to not having a trace of allergies or sinus congestion in probably 5 minutes flat. I have to keep using them, so it's not like a miracle cure, but it still works better and longer than my allegra combined with sudafed. I seriously can't say enough good things.
We also talked about how things are going with my head and we both decided things aren't good. Well, I thought some things were bad, but he was pretty displeased with the progress of everything in general. For someone who had a lumbar puncture 2 months ago to reduce pressure, I'm in really bad shape.
I have complete blindness in the dark, so I'm not driving at night anymore. It makes for some pretty interesting situations at home, too! I have to carry a flashlight (which is usually the flashlight on my phone) any time we turn off the lights, so any time that happens and I need to walk around I inevitably ram into something. Sometimes even more interesting things happen, like the time when I got stuck in our bedroom for several minutes because I couldn't find the door while I was trying not to wake Randy up. I just stood there and patted the wall until I found the door frame...then it took me a minute to find the door knob. Most people can make out outlines and shapes in the dark once their eyes adjust, but I just see darkness with no depth or contrast. It's just pitch black. Weird.
We also talked about how I was flipping through a journal of mine I had written a few pages in several years ago and stumbled on one day where I discussed the first time I began noticing I wasn't reading very well and I had made an appointment with my mom's ophthalmologist since I hadn't had my vision checked in a while. That was December 2010! My migraine issues began the next spring. Crazy, right?!
I remember that time pretty well...or at least that visit to the ophthalmologist. They were short staffed that day, so it took over 3 hours in the waiting room that day to finally see the doctor and he practically laughed me out of the room because he said my vision was almost perfect and couldn't understand why I was coming to see him, much less why I had waited 3 hours. I was so frustrated because I had been having a lot of trouble reading...it was so confusing for me. If only I had seen the right doctor then! Maybe things wouldn't have spiraled so far out of control? As I have said many times - there is a purpose to all of this. I don't know what it is yet, but I know there is a reason for all of it. I know there's a reason things haven't been easy. I'm also intrigued by the fact that my migraines didn't begin until after Randy and I began dating even though my vision began to fail at least 4 months earlier. Randy will joke around and tell you that he is the cause of all my problems, but I believe that God allowed my body to remain well long enough for me to have him there to comfort me once my troubles began. He has been there for me from the very beginning! So neat!
Anyway, Dr. P decided that we have officially maxed out our options for what we're currently doing in regards to the medication and it's not working, so we need to look into other things and get a handle on this. He was really concerned because he said he could tell my speech and response time was delayed again. He could tell I wasn't functioning as well as I need to be at this time. I've known it based on how I felt, so it was nice to hear him confirm it. Sometimes I feel lazy or stupid when my brain lags like it has been lately, but I honestly can't help it. Even these blog posts take me days and sometimes weeks to write! Don't let them fool you! I have no focus or clarity right now. I'm also having a significant problem with spelling, as I mentioned in my last post, and I have even noticed that when my mind is working vs not working as well my handwriting has been changing. I've had to work on a lot of crazy homework assignments for this one class lately and I gathered them all together yesterday and my jaw literally dropped when I noticed my handwriting. It just about looked like 2 different people wrote the different assignments! I could remember that one of the days I was having a really hard time thinking and barely pushed through 1 page of work that day and that page looked like a bomb had exploded in my handwriting, but the other one was 3 pages of small, neat handwriting and I remembered feeling very clear that day and got several pages done in one sitting. SO weird.
So he wants me to go ahead and see my new neuro-ophthalmologist and see what he has to say, but he also wants me to contact a neurosurgeon and have him review my case. Dr. P said he works very closely with him and he really respects and trusts his opinion and knows he will do what is right for his patients. After a little research of my own, I'm pretty confident in him as well. He has more good reviews online than almost any doctor I have ever researched. The only bad reviews (maybe 2 bad reviews?) I can even find of him aren't even about him, but about his staff, and other comments are pretty quick to call those comments out and say that his staff is incredible as well. I'm pretty pumped. So we're going to look into the possibility of placing a shunt into my head to continually drain the excess fluid causing the pressure, which is the standard procedure and is fairly safe and routine, or possibly other options. A shunt is basically a drain that they place in your head and it continually drains and channels the fluid out of your head into another part of your body to be absorbed somewhere else.
Well, it's all fun and games until you bring in the neurosurgeon, right?
I was pretty excited after my appointment with Dr. P because I just felt very hopeful that we were moving in the right direction. I mean, at least we're moving, right? Considering the last 6 months have been like sticking a bandaid on a leaky roof in a hurricane, I was excited that we were doing something. Honestly, I'm kind of excited that we're talking about the shunt surgery. Randy and I have been discussing it for a few months now and we basically decided if the doctors agree that it will most likely give me a normal life and fix this crap, then we're doing it. Tons of people live happy, normal lives with shunts.
What I didn't consider was that other people get a little freaked out when you start tossing around the word "neurosurgeon." My husband, for example.
I couldn't call him after my appointment because he was in a meeting, so around 4:15 I texted him "Dr. P. wants me to go see a neurosurgeon" and he got pretty freaked out. I couldn't really understand why, considering we've been dealing with all of this for years, but then I thought about how I felt if he (or anyone I loved) texted me the same thing I said and I understood. Sooo...future notice...
As of TODAY (except yesterday if you're reading this on Thursday, May 1) it's ONE WEEK until I see my new neuro-ophthalmologist!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have been waiting so long for this appointment! I am so excited!
The next week is going to be very exciting! I have a quick break from school for a few days so I can breathe and Randy & I are going to visit my family because we've both been too sick to go the past 2 times we've tried to go AND there's a wedding shower for my sister-in-law TO BE! I'm so excited to be able to go because if we had gone the other times we were going to I wouldn't have been able to :(
As more and more happens the more I'm convinced that my life is insane, but I'm also very much aware that God has an incredible plan in all of this. As I go through everything that has happened it is so obvious that His Hand has woven this story together. I just know there's a purpose.
Even when you begin back at the vision loss I mentioned earlier and go through our love story from the beginning, He is so involved. It just blows me away!
That's how I can go through this and manage to smile - I know He has a plan.
If nothing else, I am so much better for all of the struggles I have been given.
He is good!
On a side note: if you want to follow my blog via google or by email - where you will be notified when there is a new post - check out the bar on the right side ----------------->>>>>>>
My allergies have been absolutely killer these days, but I've been managing them more or less with non-stop doses of an allergy pill as well as a decongestant. As soon as they begin to wear off I can tell. It's crazy, but still manageable. Wednesday morning I woke up and felt like death was pouring from my sinuses. I sounded like the stereotypical person with a cold or whatever on those those commercials. I was miserable and I couldn't bring myself to uncurl from a little ball in bed. So I made an appointment with Dr. P to see if I was developing a sinus infection because it was pretty obvious things were getting worse. Now I have an antibiotic to get rid of the yuck. I'm really hoping it works and that it was an infection making my allergies OUT OF CONTROL the last month and a half because the alternative is having to deal with the unbearable goopy itchiness indefinitely. I have seriously never had allergies like these! Crazy! The final solution for my allergies was essential oils. I'll have to talk about them later because I just can't get over how much they helped me! I went from not being able to breathe for 2 months to not having a trace of allergies or sinus congestion in probably 5 minutes flat. I have to keep using them, so it's not like a miracle cure, but it still works better and longer than my allegra combined with sudafed. I seriously can't say enough good things.
We also talked about how things are going with my head and we both decided things aren't good. Well, I thought some things were bad, but he was pretty displeased with the progress of everything in general. For someone who had a lumbar puncture 2 months ago to reduce pressure, I'm in really bad shape.
I have complete blindness in the dark, so I'm not driving at night anymore. It makes for some pretty interesting situations at home, too! I have to carry a flashlight (which is usually the flashlight on my phone) any time we turn off the lights, so any time that happens and I need to walk around I inevitably ram into something. Sometimes even more interesting things happen, like the time when I got stuck in our bedroom for several minutes because I couldn't find the door while I was trying not to wake Randy up. I just stood there and patted the wall until I found the door frame...then it took me a minute to find the door knob. Most people can make out outlines and shapes in the dark once their eyes adjust, but I just see darkness with no depth or contrast. It's just pitch black. Weird.
We also talked about how I was flipping through a journal of mine I had written a few pages in several years ago and stumbled on one day where I discussed the first time I began noticing I wasn't reading very well and I had made an appointment with my mom's ophthalmologist since I hadn't had my vision checked in a while. That was December 2010! My migraine issues began the next spring. Crazy, right?!
I remember that time pretty well...or at least that visit to the ophthalmologist. They were short staffed that day, so it took over 3 hours in the waiting room that day to finally see the doctor and he practically laughed me out of the room because he said my vision was almost perfect and couldn't understand why I was coming to see him, much less why I had waited 3 hours. I was so frustrated because I had been having a lot of trouble reading...it was so confusing for me. If only I had seen the right doctor then! Maybe things wouldn't have spiraled so far out of control? As I have said many times - there is a purpose to all of this. I don't know what it is yet, but I know there is a reason for all of it. I know there's a reason things haven't been easy. I'm also intrigued by the fact that my migraines didn't begin until after Randy and I began dating even though my vision began to fail at least 4 months earlier. Randy will joke around and tell you that he is the cause of all my problems, but I believe that God allowed my body to remain well long enough for me to have him there to comfort me once my troubles began. He has been there for me from the very beginning! So neat!
Anyway, Dr. P decided that we have officially maxed out our options for what we're currently doing in regards to the medication and it's not working, so we need to look into other things and get a handle on this. He was really concerned because he said he could tell my speech and response time was delayed again. He could tell I wasn't functioning as well as I need to be at this time. I've known it based on how I felt, so it was nice to hear him confirm it. Sometimes I feel lazy or stupid when my brain lags like it has been lately, but I honestly can't help it. Even these blog posts take me days and sometimes weeks to write! Don't let them fool you! I have no focus or clarity right now. I'm also having a significant problem with spelling, as I mentioned in my last post, and I have even noticed that when my mind is working vs not working as well my handwriting has been changing. I've had to work on a lot of crazy homework assignments for this one class lately and I gathered them all together yesterday and my jaw literally dropped when I noticed my handwriting. It just about looked like 2 different people wrote the different assignments! I could remember that one of the days I was having a really hard time thinking and barely pushed through 1 page of work that day and that page looked like a bomb had exploded in my handwriting, but the other one was 3 pages of small, neat handwriting and I remembered feeling very clear that day and got several pages done in one sitting. SO weird.
So he wants me to go ahead and see my new neuro-ophthalmologist and see what he has to say, but he also wants me to contact a neurosurgeon and have him review my case. Dr. P said he works very closely with him and he really respects and trusts his opinion and knows he will do what is right for his patients. After a little research of my own, I'm pretty confident in him as well. He has more good reviews online than almost any doctor I have ever researched. The only bad reviews (maybe 2 bad reviews?) I can even find of him aren't even about him, but about his staff, and other comments are pretty quick to call those comments out and say that his staff is incredible as well. I'm pretty pumped. So we're going to look into the possibility of placing a shunt into my head to continually drain the excess fluid causing the pressure, which is the standard procedure and is fairly safe and routine, or possibly other options. A shunt is basically a drain that they place in your head and it continually drains and channels the fluid out of your head into another part of your body to be absorbed somewhere else.
Well, it's all fun and games until you bring in the neurosurgeon, right?
I was pretty excited after my appointment with Dr. P because I just felt very hopeful that we were moving in the right direction. I mean, at least we're moving, right? Considering the last 6 months have been like sticking a bandaid on a leaky roof in a hurricane, I was excited that we were doing something. Honestly, I'm kind of excited that we're talking about the shunt surgery. Randy and I have been discussing it for a few months now and we basically decided if the doctors agree that it will most likely give me a normal life and fix this crap, then we're doing it. Tons of people live happy, normal lives with shunts.
What I didn't consider was that other people get a little freaked out when you start tossing around the word "neurosurgeon." My husband, for example.
I couldn't call him after my appointment because he was in a meeting, so around 4:15 I texted him "Dr. P. wants me to go see a neurosurgeon" and he got pretty freaked out. I couldn't really understand why, considering we've been dealing with all of this for years, but then I thought about how I felt if he (or anyone I loved) texted me the same thing I said and I understood. Sooo...future notice...
As of TODAY (except yesterday if you're reading this on Thursday, May 1) it's ONE WEEK until I see my new neuro-ophthalmologist!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have been waiting so long for this appointment! I am so excited!
The next week is going to be very exciting! I have a quick break from school for a few days so I can breathe and Randy & I are going to visit my family because we've both been too sick to go the past 2 times we've tried to go AND there's a wedding shower for my sister-in-law TO BE! I'm so excited to be able to go because if we had gone the other times we were going to I wouldn't have been able to :(
As more and more happens the more I'm convinced that my life is insane, but I'm also very much aware that God has an incredible plan in all of this. As I go through everything that has happened it is so obvious that His Hand has woven this story together. I just know there's a purpose.
Even when you begin back at the vision loss I mentioned earlier and go through our love story from the beginning, He is so involved. It just blows me away!
That's how I can go through this and manage to smile - I know He has a plan.
If nothing else, I am so much better for all of the struggles I have been given.
He is good!
On a side note: if you want to follow my blog via google or by email - where you will be notified when there is a new post - check out the bar on the right side ----------------->>>>>>>
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