Month: May 2006

(This entry, as you might have noticed, is locked to my friends as I still have to go over all of this with the folks at work and a few of them are casual viewers of my journal, especially with the E.R. visits of late… I feel it will be better if I get a chance to discuss this before they read it here and freak out.)

Well, I had my first visit with my new doctor…

The good news is they were able to induce my symptoms while in the MRI and no know what my problem is. The bad news is they figured out that I’m essentially having a bad response to the stresses I’m under right now.

A good, old fashioned anxiety attack brought on by excessive stress, pain, and lack of sleep.

They put me in the MRI and a psychologist asked me a lot of questions about my day-to-day life and simply discussing my average day right now triggered the attack. Essentially the combination of back and neck pain, lack of sleep, not taking lunches or breaks, working on work stuff evenings and weekends, worry over my current medical bills and other finances, driving myself too hard to get results for things like the last client I worked with, and never being able to get away from it because I seem to constantly be under a deadline for some miracle because I’m the only person who can do it has caused brain issues.

They’re looking over my blood work to make sure I won’t have any compatibility issues with the medications I’ll be on starting around the first of the month. Zoloft was mentioned a few times. I’m not sure how happy I am at the prospect of taking brain chemistry altering medications…

Apparently what I’m going through right now is very common in the software industry and they have plans to deal with it which involve medication and psych visits, of which my first one is on the 30th.

The doctor said I should take vacation if possible, and he looked at me squarely and said “And I mean vacation, not ‘work from home’.” I don’t know if that’s possible though as I’m under a few deadlines right now to produce at least two miracles and I’m the only one who can do it…

Well, another trip to the E.R. tonight for similar issues as the last trip, which were essentially all of the warning signs of a stroke again.

Similar results this time as well; blood pressure and heart rate were fine, blood work came back perfect, etc, though this time they injected me with iodine and ran me though the CT scanner to eyeball the blood flow in my noggin.

Everything is fine there too and they essentially have to guess at this point. They can see the neurological signs of what I’m going through, but they cannot find a physical root-cause.

The E.R. doctor has fast-tracked me with Kaiser, who *still* hasn’t gotten me a general physician and I’ll be seeing someone there tomorrow for an MRI…

At least I got my insurance cards though – Kaiser told our HR person at work today that they never received ZeZe’s information from a month ago and ZeZe should get cards in another few weeks. Too bad ZeZe’s blood pressure prescription is expired and the last of the medication was taken this morning – nice time to loose the paperwork.

The E.R. doctor has also prescribed me an anti-vertigo medication (which is stupidly expensive) as he thinks that on top of the pinched nerve in my upper back / neck that I might also be suffering from a neurological issue between my inner ear and my grey-matter which explains the dizzy spells I’ve been getting, especially when driving…

So this evening’s official $5000 “scientific wild-ass guess” is that the elevated stresses in my job are causing neurological issues in my brain (I’m lousy at handling stress, and I’ve told folks as much) which are throwing off my balance and causing extra mechanical stress on my back and neck on top of the muscular issues of sitting at a keyboard the majority of my waking hours. Then as my back and neck start to hurt I start to loose sleep which feeds the stress and I eventually end up here – which is “right fucked”… Though the 15+ hour day I put in yesterday in the 85 degree server room probably didn’t help either.

No need to worry though, they say I’m not going to kick the proverbial bucket any time soon – I’m just going to be miserable, in pain, and not sleeping much till they figure this out.

Wheee!

I blame mtsilence for this one. 🙂

Just a small sampling of my animated movie collection as I have to run off to work:

Create your own Movie List @ HotFreeLayouts!

I’ve now had my first ‘official’ chiropractor session… I honestly didn’t know that I was in possession of some of the places that cracked, popped, or otherwise made sounds the body isn’t supposed to make.

It turns out that my neck is too straight and there’s a spot between my shoulders that curves too much – both of which are pinching several nerves that are causing all of my assorted issues these last few months.

On a scale of 1 to 4, 4 meaning I would need traction, I scored a 2.5. This means I’ll be seeing the doc 3 times a week for the next month or so, and then tapering off to once a week for quite a while.

Of course each trip costs a mere $45, which is an additional $150 a week I hadn’t planned on this summer… Ah well, at least the pain will go away – and here I though maintenance on the car cost too much. Hell, if I was a car I’d recommend replacing me. 🙂

So that’s my update. I’m supposed to not sit in front of the computer for hours so I’m off to go read another book.

Have a good evening everyone!