The Funnyman in My Skull

The incredibly loud noise in my head woke me at ten to six in the morning. I always have ringing in my ears, but this was ringing cranked up to eleven.

There was no going back to sleep, so I got up to go to the bathroom, and lurched. Whoa. Staggered down the hallway propping myself against walls so I wouldn’t fall.

I sat down and put my hands on my knees, and that’s when I noticed that my left arm was weak. I tried to stiffen it up, and I couldn’t.

That’s when I finally thought, uh oh. I know that weakness on one side is a sign of a stroke.

From there on it was a process of deciding what to do. I know now that what to do is CALL 911. At that point I was still in denial.

I called a Nurse Helpline instead. The nurse told me to go to an Emergency Room. I called my friend Becky and asked her for a ride. When she arrived she looked at me and said, “Let’s go to the fire station.”

That’s how I ended up in an ambulance screaming down the main highway with the siren going. I thought of all the times I’ve seen and heard such ambulances and said prayers for whoever was inside and the EMTs attending them. I hoped that people who saw my ambulance were praying for me.

We went to the ER at Swedish Cherry Hill, where I was surrounded by people in scrubs, taking blood and blood pressure and shining lights in my eyes and asking me if I knew what day it was.

Becky and my grandson arrived soon. It was good to have them there.

When the ER doctor came in she said I had probably experienced a TIA, or transient ischemic attack. Something had blocked blood flow to one area of my brain, and whatever it was had passed and my brain was now repairing itself. They wanted to keep me in overnight, because having had one TIA, I was at high risk of having another, or a major stroke. Pretty convincing argument to stay.

So I spent two days at Swedish being checked out every two hours for vitals and stroke symptoms.

Saturday afternoon I was wheeled over to the MRI unit, where the tech, Kate, fixed me up with ear plugs and sponges on either side of my head to keep me immobile and dampen the sound of the machine.

Once you are rolled inside the hole in the middle of the MRI doughnut, you understand the meaning of claustrophobia. I breathed deeply to calm myself. The loud bonks, beeps, and buzzes of the machine are straight out of science fiction.
The next morning the neurologist’s assistant came in and told me that all tests were good and I could go home, though my MRI showed an anomaly on my skull. She asked if I’d had any head trauma, perhaps in childhood?

I couldn’t remember, but I had whacked my head hard while getting into my car earlier last week, and thought I might have given myself a little concussion.

Just a little one.

She said they could do a second MRI with a dye injected so they could rule out the possibility that the anomaly was cancer.

Sign me up, I said.

I wrote an email to a few friends on my tablet, telling them I had a “funny patch in my skull.” When I reviewed what I’d written, I saw that autocorrect had changed it to the “funnyman in my skull.” Hunh. Maybe he was responsible for all this trouble.

The second MRI was not nearly as stressful as the first. Turns out you can get used to it.

The MRI results came back clear, and I was discharged.

It has been a few days now, and I am telling people I am as normal as I get, but I am taking nothing for granted. I am grateful to wake up in the morning feeling okay and able to walk.

When something dreadful happens, you find out who your friends are. It’s good to know I have friends who are kind and caring, and they and my family have enveloped me in love. They are watching me like hawks now, looking for signs of anything, you know, funny.

Guess I’ll have to get used to that.

PS: If you would like to watch for signs of anything funny, Listen in the Kitchen, my singing group, will be at the Vashon Bookshop for the First Friday Arts Walk on June 3rd. We start at seven. Ish. Come and hear!