TIA

ray and i went to DC last weekend. we had a really good time. i was planning on writing up all the stuff we did, but instead i'm going to write about an odd thing that happened the night we arrived. this was friday.

we had tickets to see violinist nadja salerno-sonnenberg perform with the national symphony orchestra at the kennedy center. (she was SPECTACULAR, by the way.) during the last piece, my head started to hurt like crazy. the lights on stage suddenly seemed too bright, too. i pressed my fingers to my temples, and spent the last 5 minutes of the concert looking at the floor where it was darker.

the concert ended, and we walked into the lobby. ray mentioned something about nadja autographing copies of her CD, and i tried to respond but i couldn't get the word "signing" out of my mouth. i slurred, stuttered, started and stopped about three times, but couldn't for the life of me form the word. ray finished my thought for me, and then i tried to say something about the conductor also signing CDs... but i had completely just forgotten the word "conductor". seriously. this is a word i say a hundred times a day, and it had suddenly vanished from my vocabulary.

i started to feel kind of light-headed. i stopped walking, and as i looked at ray and tried to force myself to conjure the word "conductor", panic started to rise within me. i tried to explain to ray the word i meant by saying "the guy with the baton"... but the word "baton" had also disappeared. i struggled to finish the sentence, saying "wand" instead. ray knew what i meant, but by that point i was near tears. what was happening to my brain? where did these words go??

i started repeating, "something is wrong. something is wrong. something is wrong." ray led me to a couch in the lobby of the kennedy center and sat me down. i told him i was having trouble speaking. ray asked whether i was feeling any numbness (no) or tingling (no). he asked if i could lift my arms over my head (yes). by this point tears were streaming down my face. i was totally freaked out.

ray asked me to count backwards from 100, by 7s. i could only get to 93... i had no idea what came next. i would look around the lobby and test myself, saying, "that's a flag. that's a chair. that man is wearing a red jacket." making sure my mind wasn't totally gone.

we sat there for about 15 minutes, and my words slowly came back to me. we got up and took our time walking back to our hotel. my headache was still there. i was still freaked out, but i figured maybe this whole thing was precipitated by the 4 hour drive, the lack of dinner before the show, or maybe some slight dehydration from traveling. we walked straight to a restaurant to have some dinner, and i felt better minute by minute. i took some ibuprofen, too, and the headache slowly went away.

the headache returned, though, first thing the next morning. more ibuprofen. we spent the day sightseeing and i felt pretty good, but that night the headache came back. more ibuprofen. i woke up with a headache the next day. more ibuprofen. by this point, i was convinced that i had experienced something friday night more than just a weird reaction to low blood sugar. i vowed to call a doctor first thing monday morning when we got back.

and i did. the triage nurse who answered my call this morning was shocked that i hadn't gone to the emergency room right when the aphasia occurred. honestly, the thought hadn't even crossed my mind. i feel like my mind was only half there during the attack; "hospital" was probably one of those words that had disappeared from my vocabulary.

so i got an appointment today to get checked out. the doctor performed a series of motor tests to see if i'd lost any strength or balance (no), and looked in my eyes and tested my reflexes (all good). i mentioned that i also recalled stumbling over a few words on-air last week, but at the time didn't think much of it... i figured i was just tired or distracted. the doctor took all of this information, along with my complaint of continuing headaches and chronic spaciness, and concluded that i'd probably had a "TIA", or a mini-stroke. she arranged for two different blood tests, and also scheduled me for an immediate MRI and an MRA, with concentration on the corotid arteries.

i listened to this diagnosis and i was calm the whole time she was talking. i remember focusing hard on the words she was saying (still feeling a little spacy), but not being particularly phased by any of the information. i was more freaked out while it was happening on friday. i guess i had all weekend to process it, and the doctor's words didn't do much to affect me.

i called ray and he met me at the site of the MRI (which happened to be at the children's hospital, oddly enough). he held my hand through the entire one-hour procedure. the MRI wasn't as scary as i feared... just loud. with frequent strong vibrations. the most difficult part was staying perfectly still for an entire hour. (they don't make that tube big enough to wiggle around in, though. plus my head was inside a cage-like thing to prevent further movement.) the technician said she got good images and that the scans would be read tonight.

it goes without saying that the scans could possibly include evidence of brain damage from a TIA, or evidence of a tumor. i'm choosing not to think too hard about either of those results. i suppose there is also a chance that it WAS just a weird overtired/overhungry/dehydrated reaction to the traveling. perhaps i'll know tomorrow.

Posted by xta at November 13, 2006 08:24 PM | TrackBack