Still Bewildered (pt. 3)

Smoke haze sunsets of late

So, back to the saga... I was teleported, (rolled? pneumatic shoot-ed? toddled? - don't remember that part), out of the Neuro ICU, up to the Neuro floor, where, as I mentioned before, was 85 G-forsaken degrees, at least. Granted nobody sleeps in hospitals, but that guaran-dang-teed i would not be sleeping. 

Every day they said, 'We'll let you out tomorrow.', but tomorrow they said the same thing. I was having seizures, but to my knowledge none of them were particularly prolonged or severe. (This is not to suggest they weren't still pushing lorazepam or whater by the tranquilizer gun-full.)

Oh, and less-than-titillating, but, i feel it important to mention - I've never gone all the way off one of the pharmaceutical drugs (lamotrigine), but i was on a lower end of the 'therapeutic range' deemed effective for seizures. (There was a study released this year that validated my experience - 'The best response to AEDs used in monotherapy was observed at low dosage.' (This study was specific to refractory epilepsy.) Boom. Case in point.

My lamotrigine level was found to be normal. Turns out it  actually worked against me, I later found out from my rockstar nurse/friend mentioned previously, in making the decision to fly me Spokane. Which is to say, if the levels were low, they could cite that as the cause of the seizures. Presumably, they could have kept me there and worked on getting the lamotrigine up instead of opting right away for the ol' heave ho.

Anyshnitzel, back to the Neuro floor, (is that capitalized i dunno - Hell is, so we'll go with it.) It's pretty fuzzy - wish i remembered more. I don't remember any of the food aside from ordering coffee one morning and wondering if i'd be allowed to have it. (They brought it, and whatever the coffee-like substance, it was better than some tepid, brown,  stomach-stripping agents sold at some gas stations.) I was very grateful for it.

My sister was able to bring Olive in during the day. Tami, my sister's wife, brought me a small fan. Oh, land, and they brought me my cell phone. (I need standing orders for them to prohibit access to any and all technology while in hospital custody.) I was texting people at o'-dark thirty - nonsensical gibberish, calling in to work (Hay-suess Crisco). Thank goodness I am not a shopper. 

(Again, I digress...) May have already told this story, but one time I was stuck in our local ICU for something upwards of a week and tethered to a hospital bed. Again the details were/are few-and-far-between. That time, someone thought it would be a good idea to bring me my laptop. I remember begging the hospitalist to let me out of bed. I will crawl, I pleaded, inch my way like a caterpillar, human-egg roll around, *anything* outside the confines of the head, foot and siderails. (No dice.) I recall feeling desperate about that. It was two or three weeks after my release, I found hospital floor plans downloaded onto my computer. Where do you even find something like that on the internet, guys? All I can surmise is a escape plan was being formulated somewhere inside my snowy, snowy, stir-crazy brain...

Anyway, the Sacred Heart neuro floor was hot and even noisier than most hospitals. I could hear kids. At times it sounded like a slumber party and foot races in the hallway. Or maybe I was simply delirious dreaming the sounds of them.

I don't think i remember any of the seizures i had during the day. I know my tongue and mouth were pretty thrashed. Freaking sharp, aching, constant oral pain. I'd have gladly done myself in with a massive overdose of benzocaine.

Ah, shoots, did I even make any progress here? I got carried away away on the tangent train. (to be cont'd)

Here's some more pictures of our recent smoke-enhanced sunsets: 

Just down the road from work

And the obligatory Olive photo

Have a sweet, sweet day,

Alli

Salt Mine Saturday

Oh mans, it's a rare weekend shift i get to pull today. God they're awful. We're short-staffed and for some reason, the crazies and shit bags seem to float to the surface on weekends. (Gah, all i've done is complain here as of late. Great success.) 

One funny/terrible thing that happened this week working in the returns and warranties department involved one of our newest employees, and, naturally, myself. She came out to our returns area which is just outside the call center/sales floor, in the adjoining warehouse.

We sell inflatable SUP boards. There are teensie, tiny, little bumps that sometimes appear in the material where you fold the board. They're absolutely, purely cosmetic and barely perceptible, at that. Like goose bumps on a new born baby. Like braille...

Well, this newer employee was fielding the question as to whether the customer should be concerned about said bumps. I responded quickly with, "Those are the braille instructions for how to get back on, when you fall off your board."

Now here I thought it was infinitely obvious i was being facetious. Lord help me if she did not forward that response on to the customer. Oh bang myself in the forehead with my open palm, any open hand for that matter. Suffice it to say, the customer was none-too-pleased with our response. 

And of course she was! It wasn't even limited to jocular, it was insensitive. (Although, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if there are a number of blind SUP'ers out there.) Have you all read No Barriers by Erik Weihenmayer? He's the Everest climber who's also killing it in the whitewater kayaking realm. Blows my mind! The book might be available in your local Overdrive library. (One of my favorite things my mom told me about last year. Thanks Mom!) Do you guys know about Overdrive? See if you have it in your area, all you need is a library card to access all sorts of audio and e-books. You can even download them onto whatever, whatever device and listen even if you're out in the toolies without any G's or what have you.

So, my point is, I regret the joke for more than one reason. I can't assert if somebody razzed me similarly about the foam deck being beneficial for SUP'ers with seizures or something, that I would always take it in good humor. 

I'm a sarcastic asshole. Drat. (But it was pretty funny.) 

Wishing for rain here too. If only we could have prayed it our way and spared Texas some of the devastation. (Spent many a spring break in Corpus Christi with my step-dad's family.) What a mess, and more rain to come. 

Here are two songs about wishing for rain (just not for Texas), I enjoy:

Not a huge country fan, but i was raised on Nancy Griffith...

And who can forget the Temptations?

Peace and Love by the bushelton,

Ajax

Bewildered (Part Dos)

Yes, I've been less-than-happy waking up with a catheter of the non-IV variety. (You can't win with me.) But, while invasive, and certainly not my preference over 'neither of the above', (see the end of Bewildered pt. 1), it doesn't suggest negligence. I did a stint at this hospital a couple of years ago. I intended to post about it, but it was sort of traumatic and I swore to myself, I was never going back. 

Pardon while I hold the phone for a moment here and hip skizzle to a couple of points I could've/should've included earlier. Was there a precipitating event? Not really. Part of me wishes I'd smoked an ounce of meth or something so as to have something, anything to implicate. My best guess is that I'd reduced my CBD intake slightly for financial reasons several weeks prior. It seemed a fairly trivial amount, but fat soluble substances could take that long to fluctuate significantly, theoretically (?)...

Also, there's my new boat. I did get her out on the water a time or two before the rug was pulled, but gah. Isn't she pretty? A veritable surf machine!

It's all a bit unnerving. I woke up in the Neuro ICU tethered to the EEG machine. The one at this hospital, as I've experienced before, has about a 2 foot lead (and I may be being generous here). This day and age there are ambulatory EEGs. This shit should be Wi-Fi. At the very least, couldn't they spare an extra length of bleeping wire?! I don't much care to watch the video, but I'm curious how all the electrodes weren't pulled off when I did do the seizure thing. Maybe they can wheel the machine around whichever way you tend to go? I dunno. Whatever.

Oh, and apparently my family, (grandma, uncle and cousin [2 cousins?] came to visit on, what I hear, was more than one occasion. Egad. My kind, fun-loving, gorgeous aunt would've been there, but we lost her this year to the ruthless, bloody talons of breast cancer. Not long before, my grandfather died unexpectedly. A month or so prior to that, my river mentor had a fairly catastrophic stroke. Additionally, recently I went to our HR guy (a CPA) and quit in a final fit of exasperation. (Might elaborate on the full story...) We went toe-to-toe for one or two hours wherein, he talked me into staying. So, speaking of triggers. I guess there are a few intangible ones, at least.

If you told me my family had visited, I'd been on a helicopter ride, and had a bunch of seizures, i'd fight you on the Bible it wasn't true. I'd been interacting with the world for days in various controlled hospital settings, blackout snowed on benzos and didn't, still don't, remember a second.

I wasn't permitted to leave the confines of the bed, much less sit up comfortably. All matters of toileting were accomplished with a bed pan There wasn't even enough slack in the wires for grabbing knees, rocking back and forth and weeping softly. 

And what the fetch are they even testing for? Were they not entirely convinced of said seizure activity? I'd already been through the gamut of testing at this very institution only to be ruled out for a second time as a surgical candidate. But, yes, lo and behold, this time, as with the last, there was documented evidence that my tongue-biting, pants wetting, and general thrashing about was indeed attributable to electrical abnormalities in my brain. 

So, I had a few seizures up in the purple-walled unit. At some point they finally gave me a bag for my shorts and liberated me from the vexatious tether and tentacles and ever-present eyes of the EEG machine. The seizures were only 2-3 minutes and relatively far between, so finally they moved me out of the ICU and down (up?) to the Neuro floor. 

It was the 8th or 9th story. The view was great, but day and night the room was about 85 degrees (29.4 C). It was miserable. The nurses were all, 'Oh, yeah, it's like this.' (WTF?) Don't know about you all, but my optimal sleeping temperature is well below 85 degrees. Thank God for that soft, delectable ice one nurse would retrieve for me by the mini pitcher. 

So concludes my second installation of wtf-ery. Thanks for making it through my not-so-succinct self-centric blubbering.

Mucho appreciado y amor.

Signed,

Bewildered

HaBanot Nechama - Ever

    ...or am I losing it all?

Bewildered, bewildered, you have no complaint... (pt 1)

Photo credit: Pinterest

So, it's been a month since finding myself back aboard the U.S.S. Shitshow (not quite schmegshow status, so that's something). A post has been whirling about in regard to the whole ordeal, but large gaps exist and my best research and inquiries have been less-than illuminating. Forgive my missing (and/or broken) pieces.

As usual, my recollection of the up-to is mostly intact. It was early morning (3-4 a.m. Sunday July 16th). I used to have seizures at night, but it's been years since I was aware of any. I woke up and Olive was upset. Not sure if I was coming out of a seizure or stuck, to some extent, in a partial one; I couldn't adequately search for the CBD concentrates I usually kept on hand for such situations. (It was all buried in a bag from a recent trip. I'd grown complacent. My last seizure was in March, and generally I've been going 8-9 months, so I suppose I was banking on a few more...)

Having taken an inordinate amount of time to execute an unanswered phone call to my nextest of kin, my panic-addled lizard brain decided to walk the two short blocks to the hospital. Though not my druthers, I'd wound up there in a similar state once before. After a quick fix of Ativan and maybe some recovery time, I'd been released back into the world on my own recognizance and all was fine again.

I made it to the very adjacent cross street, but never managed to close the distance between me and the presumed brick-and-mortar source of assistance. That was the last I remember until waking up in the ICU Wednesday. It sounds like a cop found me? In any case, the ambulance was dispatched. One of my friends who was on the call said there was so much blood on my face, she didn't recognize me until she saw my tattoo. They pushed IM Versed/midazolam on scene. From the sound of it, it wasn't one continuous seizure, just subsequent ones without full recovery in between.

I don't remember a second at our local hospital. Apparently, I was Life Flighted to Spokane. (Not one glimmer of recollection of the helicopter ride, sadly.) My slate is totally, utterly wiped until some time in the purple-walled Neuro ICU at Sacred Heart wearing the same piss-soaked shorts (with a hospital-issued gown over top) that I'd left the house in 3-4 days before.

Thus begins the first part of my latest saga that I'll attempt to relate to you in its entirety, to the best of my abilities, here in the next few days.

Sorry, as always, for the me-centric posting. It's regretful, but I hope if anyone out there is going through any similar experience and feeling bewildered and isolated, maybe they can know they're not alone, and that will be something.

<3 Me, Wildered

Dear Seizure Diary...

Photo credit; ToysRus®

Dear Seizure Diary, (diarrhea. dying. days-to-death. hash. mar. demarcate. enumerate. etch. scrawl. scribble. keep score. reckoning. counted. numbering. regarded. acknowledged. knowing. not present. accountable. account-for. tracked. summed-up. summoned. tallied. cast up. cast away.)

Go fuck yourself.

Not yours. Truly,

Allison

It's a great idea, and an important tool in keeping track of blasted seizure things, but I haven't kept one in years. It seems a full admission, acknowledgement of the whole situation (which I still suck at, though you all have helped me, unquestionably, in that regard). Plus, when it happens, it tends to be enough of a disruption (despite the relatively short duration), that you imagine you'd never forget much of anything about it.. 

Hoping to post more soon, but my brain has been swimming the last few weeks. Apologies for resurfacing when things are shitty. I probably need more counseling, but there don't seem to be a lot of other avenues for relating this ish outside the closed doors of a frumpy sham of a room. It seems there aren't many that can relate or have much understanding. I appreciate you all heaps and regret my absence. (The work/life balance is still eludes me much of the time.) 

Much love. Kindest regards,

Me