Health is truly a precious thing. There was an old basketball coach who admiringly spoke of one of his particularly competitive players: "He treats his body like he has a spare."
I'll be 60 in July. It's past time that I quit treating my body like I have a spare. When I walk down the street I don't see any 200-year-old people, and I don't expect to be the first. I do see a lot of folks in their seventies and eighties, and I'd like to be one of them one day. I want to see my grandkids graduate from college, and since the youngest one of the grands is two, I have some living yet to do. (There's a hint in there, my grandchildren!)
I do have some health issues. My being diabetic is old news - diagnosed 1991, although, if I am a typical diabetic, I probably was diabetic for five or six years before diagnosis. I have an artificial heart valve - aortic valve, October 1992, so that's also old news. Alcoholism, but I last drank in 1985, so also old news. (I drink the wine at the Eucharist, but that's subject for much too long a discussion for here.)
The new stuff: October 6 I woke at about seven in the morning and almost immediately experienced terrible dizziness. Since I am, after all, a guy, I denied that anything was wrong, and went about my business. It lasted almost three days. I drove to St. Mary's on Sunday morning to teach the Christian Ed. class that I teach. I don't know if they could tell that anything was wrong, although I knew that the day before one of my symptoms was noticeably slurred speech.
What do men do when they're sick? They deny they're sick.
What do women do when they're sick? They go to the doctor.
This happened again exactly two months later, on December 6. This time my wife drove me to the Emergency Room before I could even start to say, "I'm fine - no big deal." Hospital staff saw the difficulty walking, the slurred speech, the dry heaves. I was in the hospital for the three days of the episode, and my heart, with that valve, had more pictures taken than a Victoria's Secret model.
Heart's OK. Valve's OK. I went back to my family practice doc. There are only two things that cause vertigo: ear and brain. We checked the easier and more common one first, so I was referred to an EENT doctor. Elements of my set of symptoms matched elements of inner ear problems, but the whole set of symptoms didn't match the whole set of symptoms of any common ear issue. So, off to the the MRI. I called the doctor's office for the result.
You may have noticed that some words, when spoken by a medical professional, stop the conversation? One of those words is "stroke." That's the word I heard in the phone conversation - the MRI found evidence of an "old stroke."
How old? How severe? (Obviously not too severe, since we all know the all-too-frequent consequence of an untreated severe stroke is.) Could that thing in October have been from a stroke?
The EENT asked me if I'd like referral to a neurologist. I hedged a bit, but I know what the answer will be. I'm almost 60, and I don't have a spare body. We have ten grandkids, and I want to see them graduate from college and find their ways to contribute, and grow into their faith.
Next doc visit Wednesday (EENT).
Scary. Keep watchful.
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