It is the beginning of August 2020, and it is officially my 25th annaversary of my being diagnosed with this MeSs we all know as Multiple Sclerosis.
It started with my return from a week in Nashville, TN, attending my cousin's wedding. The entire Tennessee valley and Ohio Valley had been experiencing one of their worst heatwave where a few people died from the heat. And, yeah, I drank too much before I flew home. But hey! There was a and what was essentially a family reunion with family members who introduced me to the 4pm Rule-- that meant you did NOT start drinking before 3:59pm. At 4:00pm, start throwing baack the whisky shots!
Anyway, I was sober by the time I came home, and here, while not a heatwave, it was 104 degrees F, when I went out into the backyard where my partner was painting the new tool shed he'd just finished building. I grabbed a roller and started helping him.
I looked up . . .
I thought maybe I'd gotten the sun in my visual field, because it kinda felt like I'd been whacked upside my head, and I had a black spot in my vision. Okay, no big deal. My mother had been a former photographer, so I was ALWAYS getting a flaasht in my eyes, I figured it'd go away.
That spot stayed there all night, so I got to thiking maybe it was just a floater, and I kept blinking, trying to get the floater to go away.
Woke up the following morning and that "floater had not moved. It had gotten bigger. MUCH bigger! I drove to an eye doctor's office about miles away.
There were no other people there other than a receptionist. She asked me what I needed and I told her. She told me to sit down, and she went into the back. Opthomatrist came right out and led me into an exam room. He wanted details while he did a brief exam. He then told me he'd be right back. When he came back in, he told me to return to the waiting room for a few minutes, and so I did.
While I was sitting there, someone else came into the office, said hi to the receptionist and went straight back. That was when the opthomatrist came back out to the waiting room and collected me, leading me right back into the exam room.
He introduced me to the guy who'd walked in while I was in the waiting room, as a neuro opthamologist. The neuro dude did another brief exam. Then the two doctors did what doctors do (and irritates the beejeebus out of me!) talked to each other as if I wasn't there.
Okay, that's when the opthomotrist leaves the room, and the neuro dude turns to me and says, "I want to do a few tests, but this office doesn't have the equipment to do them. So, please go to the Eye Associates office downtown, and just tell them . . . " and he wrote something on the back of a business card.
I thanked everyone and proceeded to do something crazy I've done once more after this, drove home and I'm not sure how. exactly because that spot had gotten even bigger!
That afternoon, my partner came home from work early and drove me to Eye Associas. There I met up with that neuro opthamologist. He did several different tests, and at a certain point I wound up sitting in a dim-lit exam room while the neuro dude had yet another doctor come in to do what doctors do--alked about me as though I wasn't there!
Now, they told me I needed to go to the University of New Mexico Hospital Urgent Care and ask for yet another doctor! My partner and I go to UNMHUC and sit in the waiting area for what seems like hours. When I'm called back, there are a whole buunch of new tests. And by the way, I am now almost completely blind in my right eye, except for a tiny sliver at the bottom edge. Then two more doctors were talking to each other as if I wasn't there. Only this time I'm hearing things like "Graves' Disease. Lupus, and brain tumors!
One of those doctors now has me go to the waiting room to get my partner, and then told me to follow him across a parking lot to another building at UNMH. There we are led into an exam room and I'm told to lay down on the table . . . .
Drum roll, please! Spinal Tap Time!
Now, have I mentioned that UNMH is a teaching hospital? Suddenly, a huge crowd files into the room while I'm told to roll over onto my left side. My partner is instructed to grab me under my knees and the other arm around my shoulders while I'm told, "You'll just feel a little pressure . . . ."
"PRESSURE, MY A**!!! THAT HURTS!!!! I respond.
And since I have been hooked up to an EKG monitor, something starts beeping wildly and scares the poop out of everyone in the room, until . . .
A student appologized for his pager going off. LOL!!!
The student was thrown out. I could sit up--carefully--and we were told to eome back to UNMH later that night. 'cause now I gotta get an MRI!
Bak in 1995, there was no music piped into the MRI tube, just noises that sounded like porno disco music. And mind you, I have a steelknee because I shattered my left knee when I was 14. And that magnet was tugging that knee!
Anyway, when I came back the following day, that's when a med student led me into an exam room, put the film of my MRI up on the light board and declared I had Multiple Sclerosis, and he felt I'd be in a wheelchair by the tiimeI was 40 years old!
So after this really long and boring story--I had Vista Print create a T-shirt with a graphic idea I had to illustrate a motto I have for this MeSs:
Introduction to me! Hi, My name is Lisa!
