Here's What's Going On: Medical Update

[jfargo]

This is all going to sound very dramatic and I don't mean it to but I don't really know how to word it in such a way as to make it unscary. Sorry.

Monday I have an EEG. Wednesday I have an appointment with a neurosurgeon.

I have a cerebellar arachnoid cyst. I spotted it in my MRI before I was told by the doctors that I had one. What I'm about to talk about sounds really scary but if the neurosurgeon agrees that the cyst is the cause of it all it is very easy to fix. It's brain surgery, which is scary, but it's relatively easy brain surgery.

I had an MRI and am looking at potential brain surgery because I've been having some kind of serious brain issues:

• Headaches: Daily for over a month straight at this point; today's were the worst and had me in the bedroom from about 9 until about 3, fighting the light and hurting worse every time I shifted position. I'm taking ibuprofen and excedrin alternatingly in order to help because the goddamned neurologist decided that I didn't need pain medicine. All I wanted was tramadol.
• Forgetfulness: Laura had to tell me about a friend's wedding three times before I remembered her ever telling me and I still only remember the third time but vaguely remember something about me having forgotten it. (This is just one of many examples.)
• Confusion: We went to Costco and came out to our car only I was certain it was not our car. Laura said it was our car and I believed her because she'd have no reason to lie but this car? This car was not our car. Or there was the channel changer. I tried to turn on the TV five or six times using three or four different ways that I was SURE would work. I stopped, I took a deep breath, and I handed it to Laura because while I was sure I knew how to do it, I was wrong every time.
• Shaking: I'm shaking now as I write this. If I hold my hand out it shakes uncontrollably. Copy/pasting that link was difficult. Typing is impared but not too bad this time.
• Typing aphasia: I will be typing and be 100% certain I'm typing the right things but when I look at the screen it'll be coming out as a line of nonesense. I'll stop, breathe in, realign my fingers to home row and start typing again, certain I'm doing it right, but the keys I'm hitting are completely and utterly wrong. Laura's seen this happen once but it happens about once every other day now for a few minutes at a time. The worst episode happened for an hour.
• Dizziness: Pretty straightforward. In the past I was able to reorient my dizziness episodes pretty easily (via Ender's "The enemy's gate is down" type of fix) but these are quite a bit stronger than that and I usually have to sit or hold something very tightly.
• Mood swings: Oh, the mood swings.
• Nightmares: Are these related? No idea.

These symptoms scare me a hell of a lot more than the possibility of brain surgery. These symptoms are scary. The cyst? Not so scary. Easy to remove. Recovery is a bitch from what I hear but I'd rather deal with that than what I have going on now.

The problem is that the neurologist I spoke with does not believe the cyst has anything to do with any of this. Yes, they checked my brain to see if there was anything wrong and yes, they found this cyst but he believes this large cyst is an "incidental finding." He believes the neurosurgeon will say the same thing.

All the research we're (me and Laura) doing shows that if this cyst were causing a problem it would cause all the symptoms I'm showing. Scientific research and papers, not just "Dr. Google."

We'll see what Monday and Wednesday bring.

But I wanted to let people know that this is what's going on. It's probably all going to be okay but this is what's happening right now.