Couch 245: STELLA!

If they offer you sedation for the MRI, take them up on it. Recent experience. Zero stars.

Good to see you on here, Kit! Glad your mental health is doing better, though I'm sorry to hear about the pain. Is there an option to get physical therapy for it, or would you need a referral from your GP for that first? I can't remember whether you said you got that before for that issue. I hope you can get seen soon and find some relief.

Sounds like you have a good plan for going back to school.

Enjoy the Rams training camp!

Have you received any results yet, NP?

I think I'll definitely want sedation for an MRI if I need one in the future. I saw a new neurologist today for migraines, and he wanted me to get an EEG and Doppler ultrasound of my neck and head blood vessels. They offer them in the same office and had time today, so I went ahead and did them.

For the EEG (my first one), they had to attach various stuff to my head and chest, then I just had to lie there. She warned me there would be flashing lights at one point, which concerned me because they can trigger my migraines. And I've come to realize there's something about lying on a table either attached to some medical equipment and/or having someone, say, doing physical therapy massage on my neck that's really trigger.

So I basically had a panic attack for the full 20 minutes or so that they were doing the test. The technician was really nice about it, telling me how much longer I had in each phase (like breathing through my mouth for 3 minutes), but was also telling me to be calm and relax. I managed to get through it. But if I panic when I'm just lying on a table, I doubt I'd manage well in a tube with loud noises around me...

The Doppler wasn't too bad, though they also had to scan my eyelids, which was...weird.

The results are already in the portal, and they said all the findings are normal (though apparently the machine flagged some brainwave spikes as potential signs of epilepsy, it said the doctor read them manually and confirmed them as normal). So that's a relief.

He gave me a few new medication samples to try (Nurtec and Quilipta) and will see me in a month--then if I'm still having increased migraines, we could consider a preventive (I've already tried propranolol with no success, and SNRIs are one option, but I told him I had really bad psychological reactions to both Effexor and Cymbalta in the past, so they're off the list.) So we'll see.

I'm so nervous and scared! I have my first meeting with G this Friday. I thought of a lot of stuff I wanted to type out for him while driving home, but now I can't even make one sentence.

Hugs, Scarlet. Is that the 20-minute one? Could you maybe talk with L about what to ask/tell him?

I'm glad your results came back normal, LT and hope the new meds help!

I just checked my dr's portal to see if the results are there yet for the test I had this past Friday, but nothing there yet. Oh, well. I guess I'll wait for her to call me.

Thanks, Artie! Hope you also get results soon and that they're normal.

Yep. L says we have up to 30mins with him. Most of today's session was talking about how Friday will go. It sucks cause I really needed emotional processing time. She took notes and will send them to me tonight, so that I can write it up in my own words. I had more I wanted to say to him, but my mind is drawing a blank. Maybe her notes will remind me?

Everything seemed normal on the MRI, except for some blood vessel that's "diminutive" but probably congenital that may put me at a higher risk for stroke. The doctor wants me to do a CT scan as well, but I still need to schedule it. I think it's probable that the tinnitus is because my auditory nerves are close to blood vessels. Why the proximity of these two things would have changed in the last year and a half I don't know.

What form does your tinnitus take? I hear music, or voices calling my name or saying "excuse me."

Mine is sometimes a whooshing noise or just a harder heartbeat noise. It's definitely my heartbeat I'm hearing. Luckily white noise like a fan running is enough to drown it out.

I suppose mine is probably neurological, not physical, in nature. My ears trying to hear, like a missing limb itching.

I’m back in town from my month upstate (where it’s much cooler) and seeing an otologist tomorrow to try and figure out what’s causing the intermittent deafness in my left ear—just the progression of my hearing loss or something else?

Thanks everyone. Yes, I tried physical therapy. And a bunch of other things. I hope my GP will refer me to someone else who may have more tricks up their sleeve.

they offered VTO at work again (unpaid time off) so I took tomorrow off, so I can have another 3 day weekend. My new crochet project: wind spinners. I just printed a pattern and am gonna go through my yarn stash now and give one a try.

Not to brag but I fell asleep in my last MRI, no drugs either lol

I couldn't wait til tomorrow to try the pattern haha here's my first wind spinner. It's not perfect, but still pretty cool! It's hanging from the ceiling fan in my office, and with the fan on, it spins just like it should. Hopefully the next one will look a little better.

Oh, that's fun!

I have a fairly high-pitched ringing as mine.

I rescheduled the otologist. Was not in the mood for ear doctors and their annoying assumptions today.

The wind spinner is cute, Artie! I love it!