i speak in nonsense riddles

of apple sauce and dandelions.
It makes no sense of course,
but i am happy.
The last few months of doctor visits
and laboratory test
and people poking and prodding,
came up with one simple answer...
CRYSTALS!
Crystals?
No not the new age thing,
but something much simpler.
The physical therapist reacted strongly,
when I spoke of the twisting of my sight
and loosing balance
and of falling.
My lack of balance was apparent,
but a light bulb went on in her head
and so she manipulated my head
and later explained;
calcium carbonate crystals,
can form in the inner ear canal
and may stay there,
disrupting one's sense of balance.
TWO sessions,
ONLY two,
cleared my head.
My balance came back to something akin to normal
or as much as it can be with the vision i have.
My brain cleared
and i could think clearly again.
I still get tired quicker than most,
i do not try any thing complex,
after i get tired,
but what was happening before is gone.
And the solution was simple!

Waiting and then there are gifts

The long MRI was Sunday.
one and one half hours long,
but shorter than what they said.
I wait for results,
hoping they show something,
for i know that there is wrong,
my head spins more
and there are headaches
and balance is harder to keep.
The main worry was with my head,
but an earlier MRI,
dispelled that fear.
So while I wait,
the garden gives gifts;
The leeks have gone to flower

and the night blooming cereus treats me to 3 days of blossoms,
filling the night air with a fragrance,
that might be described and a lemony sweet aroma,
but i call heavenly.

Next

Simple - The MRI came back clear,
but the why for the new headaches remain

more tests

Chilly today,
MRI tomorrow....
no that is not how it is suppose to go,
but there have been new "things" going on.
New unusual headaches,
forgetfulness in mid sentence,
of words,
not though.
Words themselves,
at time become jumbled.
It might be due to the throbs of pain,
not that severe,
but nevertheless,
discomforting,
that course through my head.
Not the normal headache,
but reminiscent of those i had before...
before the operation,
the ones that were signs,
of the tumor pressing against my brain stem.
Besides the discomfort,
there is fear,
not of death,
but of going through the trauma of an operation again
or rather of the recovery after the operation.
Yes,
this is a lot to chew on for a Saturday morning.

Connections

I do not always need to understand, but i see "themes" shared across the people who blog here.  Each story has a different twist, but the theme is followed and its own right, it is beautiful.

So yesterday, i was at the head trauma doctor and while there was progression in the most important areas, there were areas that went backwards.
I knew there would be a mixed bag.
There has been extra strain at work and I have gone home with my eyes truly hurting.
I was worried that there would be a wholesale backwards movement, but there was real progress and so still once again, I am thankful.

I think this is fitting for thanksgiving day, so to all have a happy and blessed Thanksgiving!

A short update

While my muse is very active, I think it is time for a simple update.
My shoulder, which I hurt a few times during falls, is only bruised, not torn or broken,
A few pain meds and some physical therapy will get me back.

There is real improvement in the doubleness of my vision and this is especially true in the mornings when I will spend as much as an hour without any glasses on ding "things".

Cooking, you ask?

Well, of course, daily.
My latest success was something known as Murg Makhani, or in English butter chicken.
I have some basic Indian cooking skills i learned from a close Indian friend and the recipe came off the internet.
Sadly, I spent all my real effort on the chicken dish, which came out wonderfully (but I did not add any real "heat" to it) and my "Dall" ended up a little bitter.  Mostly because I used my main cookware for the chicken and could not reduce the lentils to the oil enough.  Also adding extra spice after I added the lentils did not help.  Se la vie!
The muse will probably be present on this site again real soon.

Snow

Snow

It started snowing last night and from what I here, it got mostly all of the East coast (save Florida???).
This snow was pretty, had mostly dissipated by 1 PM when I left work and it was warming up.
No more snow, but now comes the big freeze for the weekend, not something i am looking forward to.
The cold does effect my mood, making me feel more boxed in, not pleasant.
I keep on getting Emails from my Mom's conservative friend about the health care debates and I realized reading them, they don't get it.
The normal fear factor is there and there are statistics all over the place ( but you might know how I feel about statistics), but they miss the point.
The point is that many, many Americans do not have insurance or insurance.
People who have jobs (and are thankful at least they can work), but have health insurance that simply is rotten so they have to go into bankruptcy to deal with the bills.
People with "preexisting" conditions, who really are denied health insurance.
People who have jobs that do not provide health insurance.
If you get the drift, it is not about what the medical community can do, it is about the insurance which, doctor, the people who treat us, have complained about for years.
So it is about money and the fear factor about how the medical community will not give us the treatment we have been is fairly unfounded.
That is all from me on this.
I am fortunate, I have very good health insurance and I have been very well covered.
Not so many people are so lucky or fortunate.

Doctors

In the processes of last year, met a number of doctors, many of the doctors were during my adventure and some were beyond excellent and others were awful. I will shout out for the the best!
1) Dr. VipalhumarBhalodiya - a mouthful to say and yes Asian Indian, my Primary care doctor and if every primary care doctor could be like him - this world would be a better place. I was in the hospital for almost a total of 7 weeks during my adventure, I do not believe he missed a day visiting me and checking on my progress. He is easy to talk to and is really up on a lot of medicine. He s very proactive (though not a specialist) in things in this area that matter (Lyme disease). I have been fortunate that he has been the orchastrator of my recovery, pulling specialist when ever they are called for.
2) Dr. Rosenstien - the neurologist/surgeon who pulled of the operation that got rid of the tumor pressing against my brain stem. Not an easy operation and it worked, I lived and am able to write about it. Also good at coming by, scheduling, being informative and pulling help for me when I needed it. I would also say that for all his knowledge, he was quick to say he learned by the things I went through, That is a plus. He was highly recommended to me before the procedure and I would do the same.
3) A host of doctors at Stamford Hospital who worked with my very demanding primary care doctor to get me through things. There were some I might not think highly of, but by far, the majority were very good and informative.

Other honorable mentions:
Dr. Adler-Kline - I have known her bu reputation at the health Department as one of those very proactive with epizootic (read Lyme and other tick borne diseases) diseases, but I got to met her as part of the team treating me in the December Hospital stay. Very impressive.
Dr. Louise Resor - a neurologist called in also during my December stay. I have met her before, when she followed some serious problems David was having. She showed a lot of concern and caring for him and her follow-up with him was excellent.
Dr. Bruce Klenoff - an ear, nose and throat doctor who showed up at some ungodly hour at night during my first stay at the hospital because of some issues I was having, again at the request of my primary care physician.


For the bad, I will not mention any names, just that some who have decades of experience, know too much and are not open to new occurrences. Some showed too much prejudice ((Surgery is not medicine???? And expressed out loud in ICU). Others cling to old ideas and seem not willing to realize that Stamford, CT is in the epicenter of Lyme disease, do not seem to follow even the minimal CDC guidelines for it (yes, this has nothing to do with my adventure), and still believe the effects of said disease are in peoples head.

I guess my concept of a good Doctor is one who is proactive about things, keeps themselves abreast of new info and can talk to the patient.

Well there it is!

Thanksgiving

So you thought I might be complaining since I am not 100% yet, ?
No, I am very thankful.
1) I am alive and I might not be other wise - that tumor was not a good thing.
2) Yes I see double - most of the time, but I see and that is better than many.
Ans I sometimes see singly, especially in the morning and close up.
and yes my gait is off balance, but I am better than I could Imagine all things consideringSo I am not complaining, I am waiting for things to get to "normal" and I am sure they will, but I need more patience.
Thanks for all the encouragement from those who have responded here.
I have others who contact me directly and encourage me, thank you for that also.

Still Recovering

for those of you following this crazy post, you know I have bneeen through a ringer. I am not out yet, but finally I can say things are lokking up. Today, I did not have significant headaches for the first time in a couple or weeks or since the last operation. The eyesight is bad. but maybe getting bettter. Thw queation has been how long? August 7th. 3 months plus. at times I have been able to see part the scrabling that my brain has made of my current eyesight, but it is not enough. I patch and can almost see straight, but I need my glasses to see anything like reading materail and that is with a patch.. Walking has been a mess no matter what lately and that is a pain. So I am still in recoverery.

Pain

of course getting better is an issue of facing pain. As my eye sight strains to come back to normal, I have headaches from muscle eye strain... An yes they are getting better! The struggle though is intense. Additionally cause I do not have that "pillow" of swelling in the back of my neck, the muscles are having to re-adjust...and that is muscle pain, some what alleviated with Advil (Neither Alieve nor Tylenol seem to work on this). Of course we are also in the middle of fall allergies and my sinuses are giving me grief and so this is 3 points of different pain, 2 of which are directly related to getting better. I will take the pain because I can now see the recovery. At night, when rods and black and white is the rule, I see singlely. In the mirror, I see one of me at close range. A counter top will appear with all of its items singlely, until something moves or I see past it. Distance is different. at 3 to 4 feet a pinpoint of laser light is correctly found on the right side, but at a distance it is found on the left. With this there is some nausea and so my weight is down still a bit more (and I could easily lose another 15 pounds without worrying). I was over weight before, but carried it well. I am still covered by my sick time, so I do not worry in that area (one true advantage for worrying for the city for 29 + years.) The advantage of still doing okay with all this still surprises me. I have found out what gifts all the people in my life are, even if they are not what I expected or what they presented. All of you who read and responded to this series have added something positive to me. Those in my life who connected added something to me. I have learned still more about what gifts are and I have learned more about suffering and pain than I wanted to.

And The Reslts are in...

And I do not know, I feel like I got knocked back a couple of months.. head aches, more trouble seeing, but the swelling in the back of my head is gone. Most of this is expected. I had been recovering with this large lumo of CSF in the back of my head and it wasputting pressure on everything. It is gone and I expected maybe a week of readjustment. I got it. There are improvement I can see for a little bit then they get scattered all over the place and I am lost. The Doctor told me of headaches, my boss told me about headaches, a nurse friend told me of headaches - thought there would be headaches, but not on the level I got and muscle aches where the fluid was. Of course, the fluid adjusted how my neck musles held my head, It is gone, now things can proceed normally. And that is exactly what is happening, so now I am on the true road of recovery. And yes the operation was a day surgery, I am at home.

Okay, now waht?

I have been following a bit of info that was discovered sometime ago by a Russian scientist concerning scotch tap - it emits X-Rays!
This info was finally verified, and it took so long maybe because they didn't want another of America's great enterprises to go under the different rulings concerning radioactivity.

And yes, I just got out of the hospital for what turned out to be a day only (Morning at 7 to night at 8). The swelling is gone, no the eye sight is not back, but I didn't even expect that, but the finally swallowing problem is gone...now I have to watch how much I eat, not have it restricted because of some outside source.
So all I will say is soon.