Internists (PCP), Urologists, urological surgeons, gastroenterologists, general surgeons, nephrologists, cardiologists, neurologists, neurological surgeons...so many specialists...there is no end to the making of specialists!
Very tired today, but thinking back to those days when Susan and I walked the neighborhood as part of recovery from heart surgery. Outside my office, workers are replacing the wheelchair ramp for entrance to the library. Reminds me of Vietnam: the flukety-fluk-fluk of Hueys circling in, the drilling that sounds like machine gun fire.
One day, walking down to the mail box, about 4 weeks after the heart surgery, Susan notices that I am kind of dragging my left foot. I think it’s because the heart surgeon has nicked a nerve in the left leg while extracting the vein; Susan calls Dr. Atlas, my PCP. Thirty minutes later, we are in her car headed to the Texas Neurological Center for a fast appointment with a local rock star neurological surgeon, Dr. Don Hilton. Dr. Hilton invented this little shim-like titanium device that helps some patients with spinal cord injuries when it’s inserted between discs. I don’t know how that sort of thing works.
The neurological surgeon
Within a very few minutes, I am in Dr. Hilton's office demonstrating my amazing ability to walk. A young medical student who is “shadowing” him and looks at him with something akin to hero worship nods sagaciously whenever the surgeon tells him something about what he’s doing. He sends me downstairs to get a CTscan of my brain and instructs me to hand carry it right back upstairs to his office. He gives Susan a note instructing the techs to give the pix to me.
Perhaps the sounds outside my office remind me more of the CTscan than of Vietnam. I am in the belly of that beast for 45 minutes, my nose an inch from a blue line running down the top of the tunnel, the CTscan machine making strange noises. When they finally finish and the machine retracts me from its innards, I am shaking, claustrophobic (I had not known I was claustrophobic until then), can barely walk I am shaking so much.
Diagnosis
We get the pictures back upstairs and the doctor motions me into a nearby wheelchair. Here’s what happened: my neurologist had been correct. The blood thinners used in open heart surgery and afterwards had caused more blood to spill into my brain pan. The pressure on the brain is increasing and has caused the dragging of my left leg. I am rushing headlong towards a major stroke.
The Texas Neurological Center has a long, air-conditioned, above-ground passageway that leads directly to the Southwest Methodist Hospital. Within an hour of taking the pictures to Dr. Hilton, I have a wheelchair ride to Methodist and my hair is being judiciously shaved by a nurse while another nurse connects an IV to my right arm. It is still not noon. Susan noticed my limp at 8 a.m.; by noon, I am spread out: a patient etherized upon a table.
I wake up...again
When I wake up, I have four new holes in my head and each is draining blood from my brain. Dr. Hilton has won another one! I do not stand up and leap for joy because I would have pulled the drain tubes out!
One month after my quadruple bypass surgery, I have brain surgery. That’s a record, even for me. A few days of walking hospital corridors, an open MRI, and then home again for another month of walking. I do get a very short haircut just to even things out on my scalp. This is truly getting tedious.
Two months later, I am back at work and back on the golf course as if nothing had happened.
I think that’s all for now. I may resume this blog in another month.
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