So much has happened so fast this week that everybody (including me) has fallen behind the curve. I'll do my best to catch you up, but between all this activity and hope coinciding with Tom and Amy's behbeh Teagan Rae's earthly debut (yay!), and a busy busy work week all after a four-day "weekend" in which Sally and I combined for well over 1000 miles of driving, I'm kinda pooped. Sorry about that.
I'll post in order of what happened what day to keep things as clear as possible. Since my memory really, truly, horribly sucks - I'll scratch notes down so we all know what I should be writing about... especially me:
27 November 2007 - Dr. Sanchez, Concussion Doctor
28 November 2007 - Tina, Speech and Memory Therapy Person and the ImPACT Test
Next Week:
3 December 2007 - Tina, Results of the ImPACT Test and Memory/Speech Therapy
6 December 2007 - Steph the Head Shaker and Vestibular Evaluation (something to realign the loosened balance nuggets in my dome.)
30 November 2007
17 November 2007
Light
On Tuesday, my condition got so bad (dizziness to the point of nausea) that I left work to talk to my GP. She FINALLY gave me a quasi-official-yet-still-unmalpracticeable diagnosis: Post Concussive Syndrome. As no-duh as such a diagnosis as that may be, it gave Sally and I something to work with.
Phyllis (the GP) said all my symptoms run right down the checklist of those of PCS. Our quickie-independent-study confirmed that. Sally then looked up treatments (for which Phyllis said there were none known - but she's a GP not specializing in neurologocial disorders, so no slight to her). The University of Buffalo conducted a study on sports-related PCS sufferers where a regimen of light and directed exercise and... get this... NO DRUGS... not only improved the symptoms (of which I have noted exhaustively below), but also improved brain performance - thus working on the source! How novel!
It gets better. One of the doctors involved in the UB study recently set up camp at Akron General and his understudy is conducting further tests in the same vein at the spiffy new AG Health & Wellness Center in Montrose - halfway between home and work, right on 18. When Sally asked if he had room for another subject on Friday, his receptionist said they could work me in that day if necessary. Heh heh... working out for the first time in three months under a doctor's supervision as THERAPY for this PCS crap ENTIRELY covered by my insurance? I'll take two with cheese, please!
My final visit with Dr. Wolverine's team in Monday afternoon. I will let Maria (the Nurse Practictioner assigned to my case) know about everything on my way out the door, ask for a referral (even though it's unneccesary - but with Health Insurance, I'll gladly walk the white line as long as it ends where I wanted to be in the first place) and keep her updated if she so desires.
Looks good, eh? Yeah, well enough of that crap. It's 11am on OSU-TSUN day. GO BUCKS! Kick Lloyd's 'Rrhoids!
Phyllis (the GP) said all my symptoms run right down the checklist of those of PCS. Our quickie-independent-study confirmed that. Sally then looked up treatments (for which Phyllis said there were none known - but she's a GP not specializing in neurologocial disorders, so no slight to her). The University of Buffalo conducted a study on sports-related PCS sufferers where a regimen of light and directed exercise and... get this... NO DRUGS... not only improved the symptoms (of which I have noted exhaustively below), but also improved brain performance - thus working on the source! How novel!
It gets better. One of the doctors involved in the UB study recently set up camp at Akron General and his understudy is conducting further tests in the same vein at the spiffy new AG Health & Wellness Center in Montrose - halfway between home and work, right on 18. When Sally asked if he had room for another subject on Friday, his receptionist said they could work me in that day if necessary. Heh heh... working out for the first time in three months under a doctor's supervision as THERAPY for this PCS crap ENTIRELY covered by my insurance? I'll take two with cheese, please!
My final visit with Dr. Wolverine's team in Monday afternoon. I will let Maria (the Nurse Practictioner assigned to my case) know about everything on my way out the door, ask for a referral (even though it's unneccesary - but with Health Insurance, I'll gladly walk the white line as long as it ends where I wanted to be in the first place) and keep her updated if she so desires.
Looks good, eh? Yeah, well enough of that crap. It's 11am on OSU-TSUN day. GO BUCKS! Kick Lloyd's 'Rrhoids!
11 November 2007
Another Lost Weekend
When your wife hires church kids to clean your house and rake your lawn while your ass grows roots in the sofa to take in an entire competitive Browns-Steelers game, you've got a great wife.
When you wish your wife didn't have to do that because you'd rather be able to take care of the leaves yourself, you've been laid up for too damned long.
I find myself feeling guilty for *not* being in awe-inspiring pain these days, because the only time I'm not in pain is when I take it easy and don't do too much.
Yesterday I drove around a bit. Driving for an hour takes as much out of me as walking for an hour used to - if not more. It wasn't too bad - I felt a little drained and a little dizzy, but nothing I'd call awful. Today the only thing I lifted was a slice of pizza. (Granted, it was a deep-dish pizza from Rasicci's, so for pizza, it was rather hefty.) The dull throb is quite noticeable and constant. To steal a phrase from Kip: This sucks worse than the suckiest suck that ever sucked a suck.
When you wish your wife didn't have to do that because you'd rather be able to take care of the leaves yourself, you've been laid up for too damned long.
I find myself feeling guilty for *not* being in awe-inspiring pain these days, because the only time I'm not in pain is when I take it easy and don't do too much.
Yesterday I drove around a bit. Driving for an hour takes as much out of me as walking for an hour used to - if not more. It wasn't too bad - I felt a little drained and a little dizzy, but nothing I'd call awful. Today the only thing I lifted was a slice of pizza. (Granted, it was a deep-dish pizza from Rasicci's, so for pizza, it was rather hefty.) The dull throb is quite noticeable and constant. To steal a phrase from Kip: This sucks worse than the suckiest suck that ever sucked a suck.
07 November 2007
Clarification
When I say the head pain is "gone", I mean the head pain is down to the dull-thud level it has maintained non-stop during my best times since August. I've gotten to the point where I can ignore that largely.
My main concerns are two-fold: the confusion and the inability to do anything physical.
Confusion: Any time I'm in a particularly busy setting (multiple conversations, many different sounds, flashing colors in many directions, etc.) I become paralyzed. I am entire unable to keep up with any one element since so many are coming at me at once. Regular garden-variety confusion still hits me when I'm mentally exhausted, but the type above is the type that bothers me the most - it strikes 100% of the time.
Physical Activity: The idea of making Sally shovel the driveway once we get heavy snowfall is devouring what's left of my self-respect. She does everything else - I will not make her suit up like Ralphie's little brother after a full day of work and hork a shovel up and down our 50-foot driveway. Usually, we can pay or talk somebody into digging us out, but last Valentine's Day we got 14 inches of snow - enough that neither of us could pull into the driveway without shovelling. I usually get home first. If such a thing happens again without my head getting better, expect to find my car in the street and me passed out in the driveway next to a freshly-dropped shovel.
My main concerns are two-fold: the confusion and the inability to do anything physical.
Confusion: Any time I'm in a particularly busy setting (multiple conversations, many different sounds, flashing colors in many directions, etc.) I become paralyzed. I am entire unable to keep up with any one element since so many are coming at me at once. Regular garden-variety confusion still hits me when I'm mentally exhausted, but the type above is the type that bothers me the most - it strikes 100% of the time.
Physical Activity: The idea of making Sally shovel the driveway once we get heavy snowfall is devouring what's left of my self-respect. She does everything else - I will not make her suit up like Ralphie's little brother after a full day of work and hork a shovel up and down our 50-foot driveway. Usually, we can pay or talk somebody into digging us out, but last Valentine's Day we got 14 inches of snow - enough that neither of us could pull into the driveway without shovelling. I usually get home first. If such a thing happens again without my head getting better, expect to find my car in the street and me passed out in the driveway next to a freshly-dropped shovel.
02 November 2007
Frustrated and More Frustrated
I got tired of this "matter of time" business... it just doesn't make sense. There should be some kind of test. If the post-concussion effect is brought on by a brain chemical imbalance, logic would dictate that's testable. Since no physical damage appeared on the pictures, I don't know what else it could be but chemical.
So I sought a redirect / second opinion from my Primary Care Physician. I contacted her nurse at around 11am yesterday. On my drive home, the nurse called back and said that my PCP insists that there is no testing that can solve anything and she's got me seeing the best people available for my condition.
The best people for my condition talk to me for twenty minutes once every five weeks, issue me band-aid drugs and send me off no better or better-informed that when I left. Nothing I have experienced from this months-long saga disabuses me of my long-held distrust of the American for-profit medical system: If treating the symptoms is more profitable than finding a cure, treat the symptoms until the patient dies or gets better on his/her own.
I have no court-of-law proof of this, just 25+ years of studying the for-profit business model, huge-dollar EOBs for nothing more than headache treatments, three months-plus of my productive life flushed... not to mention a sister dead from cancer at age 43. Too bad she didn't get the infinitely more insidious and deadly plague that was Chronic Limp-Dick - she'd have four or five freshly-invented cures in the last ten years from which to choose.
All the research and fundraising by The American LimpDick Society, Relay for Wood, and March of Dongs really paid off!
(Note: This stopped being about me, didn't it?)
So I sought a redirect / second opinion from my Primary Care Physician. I contacted her nurse at around 11am yesterday. On my drive home, the nurse called back and said that my PCP insists that there is no testing that can solve anything and she's got me seeing the best people available for my condition.
The best people for my condition talk to me for twenty minutes once every five weeks, issue me band-aid drugs and send me off no better or better-informed that when I left. Nothing I have experienced from this months-long saga disabuses me of my long-held distrust of the American for-profit medical system: If treating the symptoms is more profitable than finding a cure, treat the symptoms until the patient dies or gets better on his/her own.
I have no court-of-law proof of this, just 25+ years of studying the for-profit business model, huge-dollar EOBs for nothing more than headache treatments, three months-plus of my productive life flushed... not to mention a sister dead from cancer at age 43. Too bad she didn't get the infinitely more insidious and deadly plague that was Chronic Limp-Dick - she'd have four or five freshly-invented cures in the last ten years from which to choose.
All the research and fundraising by The American LimpDick Society, Relay for Wood, and March of Dongs really paid off!
(Note: This stopped being about me, didn't it?)
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