Visit with Neurologist

The MRI looks relatively good. The white spots are nonspecific white matter. They can be caused by migraines, diabetes, head injury, and high blood pressure. They could be recent additions or have been there for 50 years. Unless there are a lot of them, they don’t increase the risk of stroke. The white spots are probably related to Ed’s migraines, but there’s no way to make them go away. If another MRI is done in a year or two, they will probably be there.

Ed’s blood pressure was 158/98.

Ed’s sharp increased pain and frequency of migraines and memory loss is suspicious because of the high blood pressure. The doctor recommended a Calcium Channel Blocker, which is a preventive migraine medication and one side effect is it lowers blood pressure. Ed will need to take it every day to help prevent migraines.

The doc also prescribed a more in-depth neuropsychological test to help determine the cause of the memory loss. Poor Ed’s on so many meds right now that they could be causing some of the memory loss.

The doctor did not mention MS. While he cannot rule out Alzheimer’s, he does not think it’s likely the cause.

Making Good Decisions

At work we're reading an interesting book called "Crucial Conversations - Tools for talking when stakes are high" by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler. It presents some interesting things to consider. Here's an excerpt from page 4:

For instance, consider a typical crucial conversation. Someone says something you disagree with about a topic that matters to you and the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. The hairs you can handle. Unfortunately, your body does more. Two tiny organs seated neatly atop your kidneys pump adrenaline into your bloodstream. You don’t choose to do this. Your adrenal glands do it, and then you have to live with it.

And that’s not all. Your brain then diverts blood from activities it deems nonessential to high-priority tasks such as hitting and running. Unfortunately, as the large muscle of the arms and legs get more blood, the higher-level reasoning sections of your brain get less. As a result, you end up facing challenging conversations with the same equipment available to a rhesus monkey.

What struck me was how many times I've been in this exact situation and later wondered why I hadn't handled the situation better. Well, funny enough the book says why on page fun.

The truth is, you were real-time multitasking with a brain that was working another job. You're lucky you didn't suffer a stroke.

Okay. These guys just make me laugh! This is great stuff.

MRI Update

What do white spots on the brain mean?

Evidently they are signs of damage. I guess that accounts for the serous memory loss issues he's been having (above and beyond the normal Fibromyalgia ones). They can be from MS or ministrokes or something else altogether.

Time to see a neurologist.

MRI

Ed's been doing really poorly lately with terrible headaches and memory loss. He's also on a lot of medications, which can contribute to short-term memory loss (as his Fibromyalgia does as well). But it's been scaring us both (me especially since his father had Alzheimers).

I finally got Ed to go to the doctor about it. Fortunately the doctor doesn't think it's Alzheimers (thank you, Father!), but there's obviously something not good going on. Ed went for an MRI today.

And so the waiting begins...

Attacked by Monkeys

From David via Skype:

Anyway, we went on this boat tour to take us snorkeling and swimming around a bunch of small islands and the first stop was a play called Monkey beach. There are lots of monkeys that live there. There were tons of people there and people taking pictures and feeding them. Little savy was just sitting there on the beach and 4 or 5 monkeys just came up and attacked her. Bit her several times. Poor thing. I chased them off and snatched her up. Stupid monkeys were still hissing at us. So the tour group we were on came to a halt and sailed us to the hospital on Phi Phi. She's got two large bites on her, the others didn't break the skin. One on her arm and a really deep one on her leg. So we ended up doing Rabies shots and everything at the hospital here. She'll have to get a couple more shots it looks like. She got some Immuglobin shots to boost the anitobdies and make sure she doesn't get an infection, and will probably need a few more of those.There was an American doctor at the hospital that was there visiting and helping out and gave us a bunch of info on understanding what was going on. The Thai doctor spoke english, but we couldn't understand what she was saying. Kinda scary. But she is going to be just fine. Makes for a very intersting vacation story though. We will definitely be staying far away from the monkeys from now on.

Happy Valentines to My Sweetie

I love you.
I love you.
I love you, divine.
Please give me your bubblegum;
You're sitting on mine!

Love you, Ed!

My Story

The last month or so I've been doing something I've often thought of doing but could never follow through on. I'm writing a story. I used to write a bit when I was younger (before hubby and kids took all my time), but I was never able to write more than a few pages. Even though I've always got stories going through my mind, it's been years since I thought about putting any of them down on paper.

But then a friend signed up for NaNoWriMo--30 days and nights of literary abandon and mentioned it to me. Here's what they say about their program:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

I guess the idea is to just get the story down and out of you. It was an intriguing idea, and so (too late for nanowrimo) I actually disciplined myself to sit down and start writing this story I'd had going in my mind, triggered by a dream I had.

My son Paul persists in calling it a book, and I have to keep reminding him that a book implies intent to attempt publication--which I do not have.

But I have been having more fun! The telling of this story has required me to do research, and I've learned tons. I find myself looking at writing much more appreciatively than I have in the past. I'm a voracious reader, so it's fun to analyze not just plot but the writing styles and descriptive abilities. (I'm terrible at description, by the way.) Suddenly the detail that an author like Robert Jordan puts into describing his character's clothing takes on a completely new dimension. It's hard for me. I've always thought I had a pretty good vocabulary, but it's been showing serious holes.

So now I've purchased three books that talk about writing--characters, viewpoint, plot, and structure. And I'm even thinking about taking a creative writing class.

What really led to all this? Some years ago I started writing my personal history, as my church encourages us to do. I realized I could seriously bore my ancestors to death if I wasn't careful, so I decided I should try to become a better writer.

Hopefully it will pay off. Since I won't be around to worry that my great grandchildren use my personal history as a cure for insomnia, that aspect isn't keeping me up nights.

But right now I'm having more fun than I've had in a long time. And I'm learning something while I'm at it. Hey, I figure anything that helps to ward off dementia is a good thing.

Oh, and I've managed to write nearly 70,000 words in a month. Not too shabby for someone who has never been able to write more than a few pages before! Maybe I'll sign up for NaNoWriMo in November.