NOTE: I started this post nearly a month ago, before the protests over the senseless deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and countless other people of color. I am still trying to figure out what I can say, or what I should even say, in the wake of the horror that my fellow Americans are currently experiencing. Other than just repeating Black Lives Matter as loudly and as often as I can. Even though it seems ridiculous, I'm going to finish this post and share. It will then be out of my brain and into the air. I hope it won't seem too insensitive...
I hope you are all safe and well during this nonsensical time. Sorry to be so off the grid; it's taken me a while to get the energy to do a post - like everyone else, being sequestered for so long has drained me of most of my energy. But I recently had a medical experience I would rather have missed, thank you very much, that I wanted to report. This is likely going to be a long post. There will likely also be some TMI that you may not want to read...
A few weeks ago, I dreamed I was really dizzy. When I woke up, I was really dizzy. Not run-of-the-mill dizzy, but the earth was violently spinning and it was making me throw up dizzy. I staggered to my bathroom, where I thought I was in the midst of food poisoning (I had cooked chicken in my new crock pot the night before). Clutching a bucket, I sat there for a long time. Not only was I clutching a bucket, but I was also clutching the door, so I wouldn't fall off the toilet. That's how hard the world was spinning for me. After a few hours of this, I realized I needed to call my doctor to get some help. After a bout of sick, I crawled into the living room to get my phone (I generally don't take it into the bathroom, have you ever read about the germs?!), then crawled back to the bathroom. It was too early for my doctor's office to be open, so I got sent to an on-call doctor. She called me back, listened to me describe my symptoms, then be sick again, and she said it sounded like vertigo. She suggested I find a place to be safe; since it probably wasn't food poisoning, she suggested I take my bucket to bed or sofa, then call my GP. I waited to be sick again, then went to the couch.
I tried to find a position where nothing would move. I kept my eyes closed. The room kept spinning violently. When I asked the Alexa in my apartment about vertigo, she described the Hitchcock film in detail. While interesting (and certainly Hitcockian), it was not useful. I then asked for details on disease vertigo. I didn't really learn anything new, so I called and left a message for my GP. After a few hours (?!), she video called me. I couldn't keep my eyes open, so I just held the phone up and told her my symptoms. She requested I do a few things, to rule out a stroke, I guess, then she said she would call in some prescriptions to my pharmacy. I told her I didn't see how I could go to my front door, let alone go to the pharmacy, wait outside, then go in with the other ten people allowed inside at one time. While we were chatting, I had to put the phone down to be sick again. When it was done, I noticed my head felt a little clearer, so my doctor suggested I use the time to get dressed, unlock my door, and call 911. She said if I went to the ER, they could give me medication via IV and it would work faster. I took her advice.
It took a while for me to careen through my apartment to get dressed and get ready for the ambulance. They finally arrived and seemed nice (throughout most of this adventure, I had to have my eyes closed, to try to keep from throwing up from the spinning). They put me on a little chair and thankfully safety-belted me in to get me downstairs. That was extremely disorienting, though I did make sure to ask one of them to lock my apartment door before leaving. I heard the lock work, so that was a bit of a relief (who wants to worry about their apartment when headed to the ER??). We got into the ambulance and they safety-belted me again for the short trip to the ER at the nearby Mt. Sinai.
Obviously, going to a hospital in the middle of a pandemic was not at the top of my to-do list. I have to commend everyone at Mt. Sinai for taking extreme precautions at every step. Before I could get into the ER, they took me out of the ambulance and had me in a waiting area, where my temperature was taken and my insurance information was taken. Once that was done, I was wheeled to a bed in the ER. A pleasant nurse tried to help me get into a hospital gown; I had another episode of being sick to my stomach, so I was fortunate enough to keep my yoga pants for most of my stay in the ER. It definitely made it easier to thrash around, knowing I was nearly fully-clothed. Another nurse got an IV into me and I was immediately given an anti-nausea drug and then someone came to give me anti-vert tablets, which helps vertigo. They didn't really help with the spinning (though the nausea drug helped), so a nice young doctor (at least he sounded nice, I still was having issues with keeping my eyes open) told me he wanted me to have a CT scan to make sure I wasn't having brain issues. It took a bit for my insurance to approve the scan - once they did, I was wheeled to the line outside the CT room. When it was finally my turn, the technician was very nice to let me carry my barf bag as a security blanket, since I could keep it outside the testing area of my head and neck. He promised the scan would last about three minutes, so I counted to 180 in my head and was pleasantly surprised that he was right. He said he has told people to count before, but he didn't know anyone who actually had.
I was rolled back to my ER bed and lay there, listening to what was going on around me. Alarms kept going off, because there was a patient who kept trying to roam the ER and punched people who wouldn't let him. They had to sedate him, then we could hear him snoring LOUDLY. Sitting in an ER is an interesting character study, I must say. Should I ever decide to write more than a monologue, there were lots of people to base interesting characteristics on. I was taken to get another CT scan, this time with contrast. The tech remembered me and got me in and out without much fuss. Both scans turned out to be clear, but the dizziness hadn't stopped, so one of the nice young doctors told me I was going to be admitted. They were assuming I had a certain type of vertigo, but wanted to do an MRI to be sure there wasn't a tumor or something in my head or ears. Before I could be admitted, or taken to a room, I had to have a COVID test. My, people aren't exaggerating when they relay how uncomfortable the test is. Yikes.
They told me my COVID results had to come in before I could be taken to a room, so I resigned myself to spending the night in the ER. One of my very nice nurses brought me a pillow so I could stay sitting up, but relax my neck a bit. Another pleasant-sounded masked doctor came to tell me they wanted me to have an MRI, to get more detailed pictures of my head and ears. He also did a test with me where he had me turn my head and drop quickly back onto the bed and back up again. That was not a fun test. I also had a walk with a nurse to make sure I wasn't steady enough to be sent home yet. Thankfully, I wasn't (I was so not ready to leave). After that, I had a fitful sleep/doze through the night.
My insurance didn't approve my MRI until the next morning. When I got wheeled to the MRI room, I was still wearing a hospital gown and my yoga pants. One of the nice techs told me that some people have complained that their yoga pants melted inside the MRI machine. Wait, what?? The younger tech even told me which brand was most likely to melt. Well, they didn't have to tell me twice. Those yoga pants came right off. An MRI is much longer than a CT scan. I've had them before on my breasts and my pelvic area, but never on my head. It is loud, disorienting, and extremely unpleasant in the extreme, especially when you're dizzy. It lasted about 20 minutes in the machine, but I was having some bad side effects when it was over. They took me back to my ER bed and I felt very agitated and dizzy. During this time I had a video chat with a neurologist. My eyes were going crazy and it was hard to do the exercises she was giving me - she said normally, eyes vibrate up and down during vertigo, but mine were going round and round. I actually couldn't finish the video visit because my eyes were bothering me, so they gave me a little something to calm me down and I dozed a little more. Later in the afternoon, they told me they wanted me to have another MRI, this time with contrast. I started crying and said I didn't think I could handle another one. Not much after that, I was told I tested negative for COVID and was whisked to a room.
I was in a room with three ladies, none of whom spoke English, and since there were no visitors allowed, I worried they didn't understand what was happening. The hospital uses a translation service where they get a translator on the phone who then is the go-between between the doctors/nurses/patients. They didn't seem to work very well with these poor ladies. I just felt really badly for them. No one really talked to me the rest of the day, except for the very kind nurses taking my vitals every few hours. I didn't see a doctor at all that second day (at least I don't remember seeing one).
A physical therapist came in to test me and saw that my balance was still bad. She said I did have to have another MRI, which upset me because of how unwell it made me feel the night before. A drug technician came in to talk to me and decided to give me a little valium to take the edge off. I also decided that I would sing to myself this time instead of count and maybe I would be more distracted. The very kind MRI tech was there again and was very nice again. And I have to say that a head MRI under the influence of valium and singing the first part of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in my head did help a lot. I was much less disturbed by the second MRI, thankfully.
Geez, this post is much too long. I'm going to try to condense and finish up, hopefully I won't leave out any fun or important detail. I finally talked to a doctor that night who said the CT scans and the MRIs showed no abnormalities in my head, brain, blood vessels, or ears, so that's good, I guess. They didn't really help figure out what's wrong, because the dizziness is still there. There was no inciting incident, so they're also unsure what exactly caused it. I'm grateful that they didn't release me from the hospital until my sister and mother arrived to pick me up - I was worried about being in my apartment alone. I ended up being in the hospital for four long days. It was interesting to me that I saw more doctors in the ER than I did in my room, my interactions there were mainly with the excellent nurses. I wish I could've seen an ENT before I left, since so many doctors said the problem was probably inside my ears. Hmmm.
I did snap at one nurse, though (and I shouldn't have) the second time a meal tray contained the one food to which I'm allergic (I was even wearing an allergy bracelet, for pete's sake). I apologized to her later and she laughed, thank heavens. Other nurses teased me because I had my own Purell to use. I tried to make myself useful by helping fill in some of the language gaps for the night doctor who did rounds (after hearing the translations all day, I got pretty informed on what was going on with each of my roommates). She was a little snarky about it, though, so I stopped trying to help. One of the physical therapists that I saw ensured that I took a walker with me, just in case. I ended up using it for about ten days after I got to my parents' house. The drive there was not easy, but not too bad, either. Thankfully, in the little cleanliness pack they gave me was an eye mask, so I wore that all the way back and reclined in the back seat. I think it helped.
I'm glad to be with my family now - I'm sure I could manage on my own, but it's nice to have some help. I'm working every day, but I have to take more breaks along the way. I'm still dizzy; I described it to the neurologist like if my dizziness is on a scale from 0-10, with 10 being having to call 911 to go to the hospital, I probably exist at a 2 all the time, occasionally up to a 4. I want to be at 0 again. I tried some sinus stuff that my GP recommended to hopefully clean out my ears, but they didn't work. I had another video chat with the neurologist and she gave me an exercise to do three times a day for a week and we'll chat again next week. I will say that after doing it once today, I almost fell down in the bathroom, so I'll have to be careful, I guess. It's really stressful to always be worried that the extreme vertigo will come back. And it's depressing to think the small amount of dizziness is my new normal. Oh, I'm also terrified of the bills I'll be receiving. I'll just have to keep taking deep breaths and keep my fingers crossed that it eventually goes away and things return to normal. In every sense.
