So Saturday, as I laid back on the floor in my stretching routine, the room — not so much spin, but it felt like it was rocking. I had vertigo. Which is way unpleasant, even in mild cases.
As it could theoretically be something serious, I hit the nearby urgent care. They said as it could theoretically be something serious, I should go to Duke E/R for a CAT scan, just to determine it wasn’t intercranial bleeding, a stroke or the like. TYG drove me down (as I mentioned Monday) and the staff went into emergency triage mode because strokes are manageable if they’re treated fast. Much to my amusement, several residents showed up to watch the process, just like on an episode of Scrubs. I was a teachable moment!
Impressed though I was with their swiftness, once they determined I was not in peril mortal, the swiftness disappeared. I got out of the CATscan around noon. 4 PM we were still waiting for someone to wrap things up and remove the various wires and IV hooked up to me. And we couldn’t get to the cafeteria — I just had to wait on the bed, staring at my surroundings (above). Good thing we both brought plenty to read.
The fun trip finally wrapped up a little after four; while I don’t doubt they had higher profile emergencies to tackle (this was, after all, the emergency room) it wasn’t as if they had to give me a long consult before sending me out into the world. Just here’s the money, here’s the prescription, here’s a flyer on anti-vertigo exercises. bye now! So it felt very long and frustrating, particularly as we couldn’t get from where we were to the cafeteria to eat during our stay.
This sucked up most of Saturday and with my vertigo, I had to settle for Amazon delivery Sunday rather than food shopping, or doing much else. Still I do appreciate the speed with which everyone got me treated. Just in case it hadn’t been harmless.
Tuesday I say my regular doctor and she went into more detail about the exercises. It’s a lot of head twisting to get everything inside back in alignment, and it’s helping. It’s unpleasant, and involves a lot of initial nausea, but I do feel better afterwards. So I’m feeling much less miserable now.
#SFWApro.
But come Monday, it will be done other than the mechanics of mailing off the illustrations.
If I have the energy I’ll post this afternoon. If not, this will serve as my week in review post.
Leaf articles didn’t start back up until the end of the week so I put in a lot of time on Alien Visitors. I have three chapters and the introduction in good, though rough shape; barring disaster, it is actually doable by deadline. I do have to start ordering posters and photos as illustrations though — I’ve left that too long. My original plan was to buy them a couple each month; it won’t be easy to absorb now, but it’ll be manageable. I watched fewer movies than planned, but I’m still on track there, too.
And less dramatic than this Joe Kubert cover.
I’m quite happy to have my eyes neither scary nor dramatic.
Getting to the lab turned out surprisingly complicated. Driving up the road alongside the hospital, I passed the entrance that said EMERGENCY PATIENTS — not noticing that underneath it, in much smaller prints, the sign said Outpatients. I tried the next entrance (attempting to interpret my GPS), which turned out to be staff. Tried the one after that, parked, went inside, learned it was the wrong entrance. And because of Covid, I assume, I couldn’t just make my way back to the MRI wing.
In the afternoon, endodontist time! After getting over the surprise that Dr. Mallik comes from the same part of England as me (it’s a small area) he took a CAT scan of my teeth, giving him a view my regular dentist hadn’t been able to obtain. Yep, I need a root canal. Oh, joy. Only I didn’t get it Tuesday, it’ll be next month, like the other procedure.
The result was that I never had the private time I need to get my head in the game. Today was not productive. If I didn’t have the deadlines and the possible sick days ahead, I’d have devoted it entirely to reading the remaining golem novels on my list.
#SFWApro.
