Sunday, August 07, 2005

It's all in my head



Spent a few hours in the emergency room last night. I'm not quite sure why. Maybe it was desperation. I called the nurse hotline because the pain medication (I hate taking medication, it always causes adverse reactions in me) actually made the headache worse. The nurse on the phone said to go in. I told her there was little to nothing I could foresee them doing for it, but she insisted that they "may need to call in a specialist". Fine. I went in. After 45 minutes in the fetal position in a dark room, I was seen and given a shot of Compazine (sp?). Didn't even touch me. Not a little. Nothing. Friday, in the doctor's office, they had tried Imitrex. Also nothing. Made it worse.

Everyone seems to be a little uptight about this angioma right now. The thing is, they're supposed to be asymptomatic for the most part. Funny how that happens. I have another theory, however: What if that car accident I was in nine years ago has something to do with it?

It was June of 1997. I was going to pick up my now ex-husband from work in our Chevy Celebrity. It was a hot day and I was in shorts and a tank top and my hair was pulled back into a pony-tail. My oldest was, at the time, three years old and my second was four months old. They were safely buckled into their car seats, the youngest in the middle rear and the oldest in the rear passenger side. It was a bright, clear day. I stopped at a main intersection for a red light. The light turned green and I started forward. I saw a flash of green car-hood as a newer Chevy sedan plowed into my driver's side door at 45mph.

My head slammed into the part of the frame between the front and back windows as the glass exploded from the inside of the driver's side window that had been rolled down all the way. Glass chunks embedded themselves in every exposed part of my body as the car began to spin. I lost consciousness for a few seconds, because our car's trunk had slammed into a telephone pole hard enough to crush it completely up to the back seats. When I came to I was completely confused for a few seconds until the realization of what had just happened came back to me.

I remember trying desperately in my confusion to open my driver's side door. I remember trying to "shake off" the muddled feeling in my head. I remember panicking that my two small children were in the back seat. They were completely silent. I crawled out through the crushed remains of my door and stood dizzily leaning against the car's side for a second. I looked up and spotted the driver of the other car in the thick, gathering crowd: a teenaged girl with a boy about the same age and an infant. I screamed en expletive (still regret that to this day, it wasn't very nice, they were as scared as I was, and just kids) and said "My kids are in the car!" I stumbled around to find a door that would open to pull my children from the car. I was terrified. The car was bent into an unbelievably complex twist of shapes and all I could think of was the possibility of a gas leak.

I was protectively huddled with my children on the curb when a woman came up to offer me her cell phone. I remember looking at it strangely for a second... The characters on all of the buttons looked like hieroglyphics to me. I shook my head and handed it back to her as police and ambulance crews began to show up. My children were pried from my arms as medical personnel looked them over and then me. The officers asked me questions that I barely understood, and yet answered almost automatically. I felt separated from my own body.

My older son had been in one of those bench-style carseats. The paramedics were concerned with a back injury and strapped him onto a back board as he cried for mommy in utter fear of what these strangers were doing to him. Someone said I had blood all over my face, although I felt no pain. I knew I was in shock. The glass from the exploded door had lodged itself into my hair, my gums, my arms and legs, even up my nose. I thanked God it had been rolled down, because my face would have likely resembled hamburger if the glass had been all the way up and exploded.

I was given a typical TPR/BP (temperature, pulse, respirations and blood pressure)and a doctor shone a light into my eyes. There were no x-rays, no CT scans. That was it. My children were checked out and the oldest was given an x-ray to look for the possibility of a back injury. There was none.

my head felt spongy and sore on the left side above the ear. I was dizzy for months. A year to the month later, the man who is now me ex-husband chose that exact spot to plant the knuckles of his fist into during one of his drunken rages.

My question is this: Angioma or no, what about the possibility of undiagnosed injuries from the accident and/or the abuse? What about a pinched nerve between the c1 vertebrae and my skull? It burns there on the left side. The entire left side of my head feels as though it's fallen asleep occasionally, usually surrounding the occurrence of a headache. The headaches are also on the left side. I had also considered the possibility of a minute glass shard being lodged deep in my inner ear.

I see the neurologist on Wednesday. We'll know more then.

2 comments:

Kat said...

Definitely mention all of that to the neurologist. The ER was absolutely retarded not to give you a head check! Can they spell lawsuit? Or has it been too long?

Beth said...

My God, woman! Absolutely could be something from the accident! Check it out! Do whatever it takes! I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for you.