Supplies:
Look Deep Into Nature by Rachel Jefferies
Work It Out by Paislee Press
Word count: 936 words
Story:
I've only needed to go to the A&E once in my life (this far). This story is one that fills me with gratitude. Gratitude for my health, for the help that's there when I need it, and for the immense privilege of public healthcare.
It was a very ordinary Wednesday morning in January 2018. The first thing that happened was that my eyesight became really ... strange. Everything was the same colour and light as it usually would, but somehow the texture of the world changed, in a circle around the edges of my visual field. Sometimes it looked as though my vision bubbled and boiled, sometimes there were multi-coloured prisms dancing in front of my eyes, sometimes it looked like the world in front of me collapsed into small squares that fell and fell onto each other ... Right in the middle of the visual field I could sometimes focus, but everything around the little focused dot just fell apart when I tried to look at it.
I felt dizzy too, so then I tested myself for a stroke the way I've been taught, figured out that it was not a stroke, still felt dizzy, and decided to go to bed. But then, the world began to tilt and threatened to throw me off entirely! I thought it was safest to slide down on the floor. And then I started shaking and my lips and tongue went numb, and everything started to feel so indefinably scary! I figured it was best to just stay where I was. I stayed there on the floor for an hour or so, until the worst passed; a rather gruesome hour, all in all. But the strange eye phenomenon didn't pass. And I had the strangest headache, unlike any headache I've had before. It wasn't brutal at all - I've certainly felt worse - it was just different. It was like a tight iron strap around my head, but the pressure moved around my head, so it didn't hurt in the same spot for long.
At this point, since it wasn't hurting much, I thought it was lack of sleep, and thought I could sleep it off. As long as I lay still in my bed and didn't try to look at something, I felt quite okay, and that terribly unpleasant dizziness and numbness had passed.
But the next morning, the headaches and visual disturbances were still not gone, so I called the vårdcentral (GP) and tried to book an appointment. But they didn't want me! The kind nurse I spoke to said that since she couldn't entirely rule out that I had had a TIA (or mini-stroke as it’s sometimes called), she would commit misconduct if she didn't send me to the A&E. Oh well!¨
So off to the hospital it was! Dad drove me, and my mum came along too - she wanted to wait there with me. (The fact that I was 33 years old didn’t make her any less "mum".) I felt quite uneasy about the whole thing, since I felt ... kinda fine, just weird. And I didn't want to occupy space at the hospital that could be better used. But the nurse told me to go there, so that's what we did. I had expected to wait forever, but the whole thing was very quick! I was examined almost immediately and had my blood drawn (thank god that the nurse was so good - she only had to try once in each arm before my veins chose to cooperate! Normally they'll have try many more times than that because of my hopeless hidden veins, and even though I've become used to it over the years it does start to hurt after a while).
After a short wait I was called into another room and shown to a bed. A doctor came and asked many questions and did many tests (closing my eyes and standing on one leg and and pointing and following a pen with my eyes and all manner of things) and then I was mostly lying there, listening to a podcast with my eyes closed so that all the dancing prisms would calm down.
After more waiting, a few more rounds of questions, and new blood tests, the doctor came back and told me that he had consulted with his team and that their conclusion is that I have migraine with aura. Ehm ... what? I had never even heard of this before! But apparently, I had described the visual phenomenon I was experiencing almost exactly like typical migraine with aura, except for the fact that it stayed over night - it would usually pass after a few hours, the doctor said. But I thought that migraine was supposed to really really hurt? I had a headache, certainly, but nothing I couldn't manage? But he said it's possible to have a migraine entirely without headache, too - also new information for me! So he told me what migraine medicine I should get and then we went home, I took my pills, and fell asleep. The whole thing took less than three hours.
The morning after I was tired, so tired, and my whole body felt slightly mangled, my muscles slow and heavy. But the headache was gone, and so were the prisms and bubbles in my visual field. And I've not had another migraine since. Just gratitude that I’ve been so spared from pain and illness thus far.
A few weeks later I got the bill - 300 SEK* all in all. Why is it that people don't like paying taxes again?
*roughly 36 USD
