Hola Darling Ones,
Today was my highly-anticipated, long-awaited appointment with the neurologist.
Her name was Dr. S and I really liked her. She was kind, compassionate and straightforward, and super smart. It was the caring and compassionate that really won me over because due to my unruly body I’ve had more than my fair share of rude healthcare professionals.
Today, was in a word, overwhelming.
I have a ton of follow up to do, and I’m out of practice. It’s been a hot minute since I’ve had stacks of medical appointments.
Next week I get labs done for a bunch of genetic testing to see if blood clots or strokes are in my genes. This will be super beneficial since I only know half of my medical history since I never met my biological father.
Then in two weeks I’ll be doing an overnight sleep study. She wants to test me for sleep apnea and make sure there’s nothing besides brain damage making me so dang tired all the time. Also, I guess sleep apnea can lead to strokes.
Then in the coming months I’ll be seeing a vascular surgeon and somebody for a Neuro intervention. I forgot what that is.
At some point they’re going to do an echocardiogram and I’ll have to wear a heart monitor for 30 days. The intervention might be for the tiny 1.5 mm aneurysm in my brain. That was BRAND NEW INFORMATION.
Dr. S wasn’t very concerned about it. She said they usually don’t do anything until the aneurysm 4 mm, but since I am so young she is being very aggressive. Hence all the scary sounding follow-up appointments. She wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t do anything about the aneurysm or the narrowing of the artery in my neck, but she wants me in the care loop and make sure everything is monitored.
She continually emphasized that she was being aggressive because of my age.
It way kind of nice to be called young and even “so young.” Though, my apparent youth, is what gives her some concern. I’m just too young to have had a stroke and she wants to make sure we’re doing everything possible to make sure I don’t have another one. I appreciate that, because having another stroke would suck very very hard.
On my end, on the things I can control, I got an A+ on my strokes recover efforts, and you know how much I love an A+. She was very happy that I had gotten my blood sugar and blood pressure under control and that I’ve lost some weight. She said I was doing everything that I should be doing.
It was nice to hear, but I was all, this is still garbage and I can’t walk so well! We didn’t have a change to get into that. She was concerned about the internal stuff and I want to know why my Floppy Scoop is so damn heavy. I hope to cover that when I see her again in October.
My journey continues.
Your friend with the damaged brain,
Jodi