And here I thought I was all over that stroke and everything was back to normal (whatever that is) — but NO! My roommate from college, whom I hadn’t seen in 47 years, and her husband were coming down to Austin from Virginia for a wedding. John and I drove to Austin Sunday afternoon, December 11th and we partied (as much as people our age can party any more) for the next day and a half. The job of driving around Austin was bestowed upon me since I had the dubious distiction of having lived in Austin in this century. As some of you may remember, driving with me can be quite exciting and I think all three of the passengers probably aged disproportionally during the short time I was behind the wheel. But we did NOT go through that red light and we arrived safe the various destinations, although they all threatened to get out and kiss the ground when we did arrive. Needless to say, it was a busy day and a half.
I think I may have tried to do too much and my left leg was feeling sort of funny when we got back to the hotel room on Monday night. We were going to meet some good friends from Austin for brunch on Tuesday and then head back home. When I woke up Tuesday morning, my left leg was again completely useless and my left hand was tingling — just like when I woke up in early November. So we got in the car and headed right back to Mansfield. My leg wasn’t feeling any better by that evening, so back we went to the hospital in Arlington. Evidently when it’s anything like that, particularly on one side of your body, they just assume it’s a stroke. So all the procedures were repeated — the CAT scan, the EKG, the MRI of your brain and then I was whisked upstairs again to the Acute Care floor. But instead of getting better in the next day or so, this time my left side just stayed numb.
Then the heart monito showed an irregular heart beat so I was transferred down to the Cardiac Care floor two floors down. They put me on a 24-hour monitor that records your heart beat every minute or so for the 24 hours. Then the cardiologist decided I should have a TEE (transesophageal echocardiogram ) where they use a tiny camera to check for clots in the back side of your heart. No clots (but he did find an aneurysm) so I finally got to go home on Friday night.
By that time, I know I was tired of being in the hospital and I think the cardiologist was tired of seeing me in the hospital, so I was rather abruptly discharged — with no prescription for physical therapy — more about that later.
