New trial on the horizon...

I have never been good about keeping journals even as a little kid I would start one and never do much at all. As an adult I wish I could say I improved. Unfortunately, I have not. As I grew up I learned to deal with crisis in many different ways. As a child I would go outside with my animals and hide on the side of the house and sing made up songs and talk to my animals. As I got older hiding like that wasn't always an option. Once I started driving music still became my outlet. I would blast the music and tune out the world around me. As an adult I couldn't exactly leave my kids at home and go driving. I would sit in the dark after the kids went to bed and listen to the radio. Eventually, I found the blog world.

I wrote to ease my mind to put things on paper that I thought that nobody else would read or care to read. That became a chore to do with work and kids growing up and getting busier. It is funny how life changes us but yet we still retreat to our places we know to rescue us from the unknown. Now I can leave my kids at home being that they are all teenagers and drive and blast the music. But for some reason today I needed to write.

Over my adult years I have had plenty of troubles, trials, crisis or whatever name you want to put to them. From divorce, single parenting, health issues of children and many many more things. I managed to figure out how to overcome those things and help my kids to overcome them as well. Lots of prayer and thankfully plenty of support from my family. But today seems different. The reality of my health problems feels different. To that point of I am just not sure where to turn or what I am suppose to do with the possible outcomes.

Let me go back a little bit. Several years ago I had an issue with my health where I developed severe migraines and loss of part of my vision. It came with other symptoms as well that made it impossible to work at that time. I was off for 3 months and never felt more alone during that time. Eventually, I was able to go to back to work and the migraines I learned to live with and had decreased over time. I had been told that the Psuedo tumor had resolved itself and that we would just watch it. The last time I thought I was having problems everything turned out okay. Fast forward to December of last year. I started noticing my eye sight was getting bad. I figured I was approaching 40 and it was time for glasses. Life happened in my house and I put going to the doctor on hold to take care of my kids. That is totally normal right? I figured it is just glasses it can wait.


Last week I ran into target to return something and saw the eye doctor was in. I figure why not. Kill two birds right? Well not so much. During my eye exam she explained that my optical nerves were raised and fuzzy. Hmm fuzzy is that a technical term? She said I should call a Neuro Eye doctor. I took the card and figured no big deal. I called the next day to make the appointment and didn't feel it was a big rush. Scheduled for the next time I was off. It was about a week away. The next few days became a wake up call. I realized it maybe worse than I thought. When I looked in the mirror in the mornings my eyes had so much fluid around t hem that it looked like I had been crying all night long. I got up to go to work on that Saturday and could barely stand up. All day everyone asked me if I was okay. Sure I say just a little light headed. My eyes would blur periodically during the day. By that night when a friend on the night shift came on she asked me what was going on. I finally told her. I could barely see at times the writing in front of me. Thankfully it was just my notes never happened in a patients room. But to be honest it scared the crap out of me. It progressively got worse as I waited for the week to go to my appointment. Finally, the day before I was to work my last shift before seeing the doctor my eyes just weren't right. I had to call in the next morning I couldn't see half of what was on my phone. As I tried to figure all this out and what it was going to mean for my job and my health reality kicked in.


Today was the day. Malcolm dropped me off at the eye doctor my nerves were a mess. I thought I was covering pretty well with my kids but I am not sure I fooled Malcolm. I got out of the car and he came around and gave me a hug. Told me everything would be okay. As the appointment proceeded with test after test and I realized I wasn't doing so hot on a couple. There was one test that I had never had before. It was called a VEP test. Basically they hook up electrodes to your forehead and one to the back of your head. They measure how your brain responds to images and light entering your eye. Evidently, it can tell if something is blocking your brain from getting the signal. It isn't painful and you have no way of knowing how you are doing. You watch a rotating x on a checkerboard screen and it flashes. My only thought was good thing I don't have seizures cause this totally would set one off.

Now for the results. They move me to another room again. I could hear the doctor talking to his assistant about my results and could hear some of the things that didn't turn out very well. Something was wrong with the brain getting the full signal through my left eye. It was slow. He eventually came in and lets just say he isn't a talker. He looks at my eyes again and says somethings I didn't understand for her to take notes on. The one thing I did understand is that the left optical nerve was swollen . quite a bit. He looks at me and simply state that he thinks the pressure in my brain is too high and needs a MRI done and wants to see me back on Monday and then we will talk about medicine that might help. I asked about work and he says since your are feeling bad for now one week. And that was it! No more explanation just that.