When I last posted about my medical condition, I was at home recovering from a successful surgery to clean out my left carotid artery, a stenosis (blockage) in which was the cause of my (mildish) stroke back on November 12.
For the first 24-28 hours after discharge, the patient is not left alone except for brief periods, just in case there are any belated after affects, which in my case there were.
Around 1 AM my blood pressure was u, so I took a pill to lower it, and tried to go back to sleep, with little success. About an hour later, when it was still too high (which could have been from anxiety), I took a second. That was within the parameters of my discharge instructions. I slept for a bit, got up at arounded 2:30 AM and checked again — it was still too high. I read through the discharge instructions carefully and followed the directions to call the 24 hour line in the surgical recovery ward where I had returned after the operation. As I was talking with the duty nurse, my wife noted that I had a droop on one side of my mouth and I realized that my tongue felt thick. I was immediately instructed to have her bring me to the emergency room, which is about 2 blocks away. We were worried.
I was relativeky quickly put through a stroke screening protocol, the results of which were normal both cognitively ahd physically. Nevertheless there was the droop and the BP, so we started on a complete series of tests — chest xray, CT scan, MRI including with iodine contrast. They wanted to admit me, but there were no rooms available until 1 PM, so I spent hours on a very uncomfortable ER gurney bed
Once a determination had been made that I was no immediate danger, and was going to be in the hospital for some time, I sent my exhausted wife home to get some sleep — with her own medical condition I did not want to risk her health in any way.
Without going through all the boring details, the medical team was able to determine that a small piece of calcium (plaque) had broken off and lodged in a distant but minor blood vessel, that no further intervention was necessary. My face was returning to normal, I had had a transient ischemic attack (TIA), a mini-stroke with temporary impact.
The cardiologist who dealt with me decided to put me on an external heart monitor for two weeks just to be sure I do not have atrial fibrilation. I have been on that now for aboutm38 hours and so far have had no occasions of having to push the button and log an incidentm — shortness of breath, faintheated, pain (other than normal post-surgical), etc.
The surgeon who operated on me has examined all the scans/xrays, stopped by and visited me to tell me the surgery still looks excellent.
A speech therapist came and put me through a thorough cognitive and swallowing screening, which I easily passed.
I have restrictions on activity, eg, how much I can life with my left hand/arm. I will not be cleared to drive before the 27th, but that was the original plan. If there are no further incidents my wife will head north on Christmas Day for a family gathering that will last several days — by then I can be left alone, especially as close as I am to the hospital.
I am sleeping a lot, although usually only 1-2 hours at a time.
None of my other deficits has worsened. Still some (5-10%) speech deficit, a mild problem with typing accuracy, occasionally leaving out the first letter of words in handwriting — the last has been slower to recover as I have done less of it.
So as far as we can tell, I am still on the path to a fairly complete recovery.
A few comments/observations. My wife is a Federal employee and we are both covered on her health insurance which is superb. In the now almost 7 years since they discovered her blood cancer, we have, between the two of us, more than our share of medical bills. We went through a period of some serious financial strain, but the generosity of extended family and friends (including a number of my former students) has kept that manageable. I don’t as yet know the nominal cost of the bills I have generated starting in November, but we were already in the hundreds of thousands of dollars before then. But our insurance plan caps what hospitals and doctors can charge us — I think what the impact would be for someone who had to pay full fare. I understand that there are serious debates about how we fix our health care system. Absent the kind of insurance we have, it is quite possible that either my wife or I would now be dead or disabled because of being unable to afford the care that has made a difference. We would almost certainly now be bankrupt. Some of my medical situation is clearly a result of how I lived my life, particularly when younger — blockages in arteries can accumulate over many years, and my aortic aneurysm is a direct result of having been a smoker until I was 28 or so (now 73+). But much for both of us has genetic components as well.
Further, we both now have preexisting conditions, in my case several, that in a totally free-market health insurance market could make us uninsurable. And yet we are both still able to be fully functioning productive members of a society and economy to which we both contribute what I feel comfortable in describing as giving a lot to others.
I understand that many people have jobs dependent upon our current approach to insurance, and that needs to be taken into account as we consider how to change.
However, if we do not cap/restraij in some way the obscene amount of funds going excessive profits and profligate compensation, it will be at the real cost of lives, and the cost of those lives to the rest of us is what they would have contribute — to their families to be sure, but also to our society as a whole, and that most certainly includes their economic contributions.
Hopefully I will not again have to write about our medical conditions, and that my contributions here can be on other topics.
For now we continue to be grateful for the prayers and support.
And as usual,
Peace.
teacherken and Leaves on the Current