DEFCON 3

Because I am still fatigued from my illness, and just too durn lazy, I am cutting and pasting something I wrote in an e-mail to a friend. Things are good.

“Bill went to a neurologist on Tuesday, and to make a long story short, it was a waste of time. He told Bill that the stroke area
in his brain was not causing his symptoms and that he was probably having another stroke that wasn’t showing up yet (after a week?) or that he had MS……he said that a right sided stroke would not effect the right side of his body.

When Bill came home and told me this, I went all postal on him. I told him that the doctor was wrong, and that we needed to go get a
second opinion. He said no, and we went back and forth until we had a huge argument (Bill actually said something like “He is a
NEUROLOGIST and you are just as stupid nurse”……yeah, he slept on the couch) and went to neutral corners.

Well, last night Bill came home from work and handed me some photcopied pages from a Neurology book that he found in Dr. Tim’s
library. Basically the authors state that a right sided stroke in the area of the brain where Bill experienced his stroke will cause
the EXACT right sided symptoms that he is experiencing.

This morning over coffee he said he was sorry, and that I was right.

More improtant than being right, what this means is that he is not experiencing multiple strokes**…..it is the one lacunar infarct. It also means that he does not have MS. The book stated that full recovery should be expected in a few weeks time, and he is not more likely to have recurrent stroke as long as preventitive treatment is initiated and continued (he started the meds the day of the MRI). He should have no lasting
effects from it.

The pain in his ear is gone, as is the fatigue and heaviness. The tingling is also going away. Our God is good”

At lunch today we talked some more about the last two weeks. He said when he really thought about it, he remembered having a persistent headache and that he was constantly popping Ibuprofen in an attempt to alleviate it. The more we discussed it, I recalled seeing him going to the medicine cabinet and getting Motrin frequently over the course of several days, then I left town to go see my mom. While I was gone, he said he just felt bad, “almost angry…. but not really angry, just not happy….and the headache. It wasn’t what I would call the worst headache in the world…just persistent. Then the tingling started.”

So…….he had a stroke. It was in the right side of his brain in the white matter. It effected his right side and was what is called a “pure sensory lacunar infarct”. We still don’t know why and may never know. He is on preventitive treatment, and his symptoms are disappearing!

In his words: “Well. It is what it is. I may never have another one, or I could have one 20 years from now. Or 10, 0r 5. Or tomorrow.”

For now, we have gone from DEFCON 1 to DEFCON 3. We will probably never be at DEFCON 5 again. Ever. Our innocense is lost.

At ease.

**edited to add…We are hoping that this is true. There is always the chance that, yes, indeed, he is having a second stroke that is not showing up yet. Most of the literature showed that most lacunal infarcts will appear on MRI usually within 3-5 days. He had his at least a week after his symptoms appeared. This is not 100%, as nothing in medicine is 100%. We are just hoping that this is the scenario, based on some of the literature we have read.