Ezekiels return

I've talked about Ezekiel on my blog before. So if you're on of my original followers you probably remember him. If not I'll catch you up...

Way way WAY back when I first started recognizing my headaches as migraines, and my doctor referred me to a neurologist I got all panicky assuming I had a brain tumor and clearly that was the only explanation for migraines that made me blind.

Thus, he was fondly named Ezekiel (because all terrible tumors MUST be named). Well, it was never a tumor (in retrospect, I've actually never had an imaging on my brain, so I guess it COULD be, but my neuro tells me it's not so let's just go with that) but it became a running joke, and any time I had a pain anywhere in my body we would contribute it to Ezekiel, the traveling tumor.

Lo and behold, shortly after they operated on my lung, I started having this ridiculous pain under my left rib cage at the bottom, the complete OPPOSITE side as my right lung that had popped.

Zeke was back.

I ignored it, and contributed it to either a) my pain meds making me crazy (highly likely) or b) some weird nerve damage symptom.

Fast forward a few months and the gallbaby episode happened. And I asked my surgeon about the left-sided pain and he shrugged it of as some weird one-off pain that would go away once my gallbladder was removed (also on the right side of my body).

Have no fear, like a true friend, Zeke stuck around through the removal of the gallbaby and continues to keep me company on the regular.

I finally realized last week I had been dealing with this freak pain for somewhere near 6 months now, and it was probably not proper to crack jokes about it anymore but to perhaps actually have it looked into. Naturally, instead of consulting my doctor I whined about it to a friend of mine who is a doctor (he is also a friend I once dated, so I'd like to think he is more vested in my health because of that) and he didn't think the theory of Ezekiel was very funny, nor was the fact I had been ignoring the symptoms for six months, and gave me a LONG, detailed list of tests I should request be ran.

Whoops!

I'm off to the doctor today, to go over CT results from last Friday, and see what he thinks.  While I'd love to not have anything wrong, I would also find it incredibly hard to believe that nothing is causing this pain. Nothing other than a traveling tumor, of course.

Cheers to yet another doctors office chat. I'm beginning to think I spend more time bonding with my doctors than anyone I've dated in the past three years.

Friday Randoms

$1750.00.
Not counting shipping & handling (although I'm pretty sure if it's not free for an order over that amount then, in the words of Stefanie Tanner, how rude!)

Wait, wait, no I didn't spend that much. I was just calculating the total for all the watches I currently would enjoy having from the Michael Kors website. Dear MK, please stop making watches...mmmmkkkthanks!


In other news, I went to the doctor for my migraines on Tuesday. We established that I go blind because I get ocular migraines. Neat, I already knew that from Google, but thanks Mr. MD. I was in and out of his office within 10 minutes, with a prescription for Frova in hand and a $100+ bill on my way to my mailbox any day now I'm sure. (PS Doesn't my medicine sound fun.... like a rapper or a Disney character or something! Haven't had another migraine yet so I haven't gotten the chance to test it out, my fingers are crossed though!)


On my way home from the doctors office I passed our local library, so of course I had to make a stop! I picked up this bad boy along with a few others that I can't wait to read...

ChrisChris and I's date Wednesday night was wonderful. We had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. Yum. Is anyone else as obsessed with their 'brown bread' as I am? I can't stop eating it, and always end up ruining my meal because I'm so full but it's so soo good to me for some reason. I don't even know what it's really called, I just call it brown bread because the other one in the basket is white bread. I like to think it's healthy since it has oatmeal on top of it though. Then I don't feel so bad for eating an entire loaf of it!

(This photo is a few months old but I like it!)

Tangent. Sorry. It was nice to finally get "us" time though. Those of you with kids probably laughed when I said that, but honestly we have been doing stuff with family and friends non-stop lately! We talked a lot about our upcomign trip to Jamaica. Chris has never been, and since I'm a self-imposed Jamerican I feel it's my duty to show him the island that I've come to love! I have a running list in my mind of places I want to take him and people I want him to meet!

This week has been nuts, something goin on every day. It's all fun stuff though so I'm loving it! I've been a happy, happy girl this week! My real life bestie, Jenn (if you've never checked out her blog, you should! JAGgedLittleLife she's about to move to Vegas, there will be plenty of good stories to come!), is in town for a few days and I can't wait to see her tonight! I haven't seen her in months, so it will be fun to catch up! I even promise I will bring my camera (gasp!)

I can't see.

[photo via]

I've got a bit of a melancholy mood lingering over my head today. Yesterday I had another eye episode. I don't think I've talked about them on the blog... I joke that I have a brain tumor. It's probably not a very funny joke, and Chrischris doesn't exactly appreciate it. Understandable.

I've always gotten bad headaches. For as long as I can remember. We would attribute them to allergies (I take daily medicine now), poor eating habits (I actually eat pretty darn healthy), needing glasses (20/20 vision), whatever. In late high school I began to get migraines, and throughout college I would have absolutely horrendous ones.

One in particular sticks out in my mind - I left class 20 minutes into it because I threw up, on the drive home it felt like there were knives being stabbed into my temples and under my cheek bones. I got home and tried everything, the hot shower, Excedrin Migraine, sinus medicine, nothing worked, I threw up again and my mom ended up driving me to the emergency room. They gave me a shot and like a miracle within 30 minutes everything was gone.
Well lately my head has been mixing it up a little. I will be perfectly fine, until the vision in my right eye begins to go wacky. It starts to look like when you've rubbed your eyes, with the stars and bright parts. Eventually all of my peripheral vision goes out, most of the field of vision in my right eye looks like I'm underwater (wavy and funky) and my left eye starts to do the same. I can look straight forward, hold my hands out in front of me and not be able to see either of them. But there's no pain. Just loss of vision.

My doctor has chalked it up to migraines, saying blurred vision is a symptom, and offered to set me up for a brain scan. Except I've got the cheapest insurance known to man and don't want to pay thousands of dollars for a brain scan. Call me stubborn. Whatever. Plus I feel like I'd rather have them scan the brain when my eyes are going funky rather than when I feel fine.

Anyways, once my vision comes back to normal on comes the migraine from hell. And that, my friends, is how I spent me evening. I still have a bit of a headache hanging on this morning too.

I don't know where they come from, why I get them or how to prevent them. And honestly, yea it is a bit scary to watch as your field of vision disappears.