’Tis the Season! (Christmas and Concussions)

This has been a challenging week on several fronts. I’m only going to elaborate on the one that’s directly health-related, though, since it’s affecting my ability to process what else has happened and since I like to maintain a sliver of separation between my personal life and my blog existence, believe it or not.

Last Wednesday night, the door alarm woke my husband up around 2:00 a.m. I was outside (in my nightgown; I guess it says something about how accustomed I’ve become to Seizure Me’s antics that the only thing that really bothers me about the fact that I was wandering down a relatively busy street in the middle of the night in a sleeveless nightdress was that it was frickin’ cold out—I can’t remember how the temperature felt, but I can imagine it, and that’s more than enough). On the basis of various pieces of evidence, including my complaints about severe localized pain on my head, he suspected that I’d hit my noggin and had perhaps sustained a concussion before heading out for my middle-of-the-night postictal jaunt.

I went for a same-day appointment at my family doctor’s office the next morning. Based on my symptoms, she gave me two options: go to the ER for a CT scan or be closely monitored for forty-eight hours. Since I hate hospitals and am trying my best to avoid more radiation, I opted for the latter. She said that a nurse from the office would check in regularly and that I should go to the hospital if there were any major changes in my condition.

I’ll stop here to say that the family health team through which I see my GP is amazing and deserves to be featured in its own blog post, which I may or may not write at some point in the future. Indeed, I regularly sing its praises to anyone who’ll listen. I really liked my former family doctor, but she moved to a location that was less convenient for me, and then, like magic, this clinic opened a few blocks from my apartment and was accepting new patients. The best part is that it’s affiliated with the hospital at which I get most of my care, so there’s excellent continuity in terms of records, etc. Yay for an A+ medical team!

Speaking of which: starting the afternoon of my appointment, the nurse called a couple of times a day to see how I was doing. On Friday, before the office closed for the weekend, she told me that if my symptoms were the same the next day, I should go to the ER, and if they got worse before then, I should go earlier.

Before bed, I threw up, and my husband and I made the decision to head to the hospital. Doing the right thing sucks sometimes.

I’m not going to use much space detailing the ER visit or my treatment plan (’cause I don’t wanna, goshdarnit, plus I’m supposed to be limiting screen time, plus I have too much staring at the Christmas tree to do). I’ll just say that the CT didn’t reveal anything worrisome—great news—but that the ER docs confirmed that I have a concussion and gave me a referral to a concussion clinic for follow-up. I saw my GP again yesterday, and she had some useful suggestions for me. In sum, everything is proceeding as well as it could.

Just this morning, I was remembering that I had a concussion at almost exactly this time last year. I guess that my overexcitement about Christmas puts my neurons into hypermode, leading to … this. Not cool, brain. Concussed or not, however, I’m not willing to not continue being obnoxiously in the Christmas spirit. I’ll just do it in a more subdued manner, and mostly from the comfort of my living room.