Well..

That certainly sucked.

Monday morning I was working with a client in Colorado; talking to them on the phone; talking to Janis in Yuma on the phone. Then, somewhere around eleven o’clock, I realized I wasn’t doing anything and I had no idea for how long I hadn’t been doing anything. I was confused. There were thoughts and partial thoughts flying everywhere in my head, but I couldn’t pull any of them together. I knew who I was and where I was, but couldn’t seem to assemble anything beyond that.

I proceeded logically. It might be a stroke, so I looked in the mirror and was encouraged to see my pupils were evenly dilated. That was good. I ate an aspirin. It might be blood sugar. I ate some food. No change. Maybe I should look at the job I was doing on the computer. Couldn’t make sense of it. Maybe some exercise would help shake me out of it. I rode the Trikke around the big pond. Didn’t help, but riding the Trikke takes some coordination and balance. I was symmetrical. Maybe it’s not a stroke. I called Judy.

Judy came home from shopping. EMS arrived. All the neighbors came over. I remained confused but stable. Judy drove me to the hospital. I got admitted. The hospital ran every test I can name. Chest X-ray. CAT Scan. MRI. EKG. Carotid ultrasound. Echocardiogram. EEG. Blood vials drawn day and night. All the tests came back negative except the EEG. It hasn’t come back yet.

That was a really crummy place to be. All that noise and activity in my head; knowing very little of it had to do with what was actually going on around me. The fog in my head started to lift about dinnertime. By about midnight I was feeling real clarity again. We don’t know what happened. There are technical terms like Transient Ischemia Attack (TIA), and Transient Global Amnesia (TGA) being bandied about, but so far, no trace of anything left behind for diagnostic purposes. No trace left behind is a good thing though. I’d much rather they look inside my head and find nothing, than they look inside my head and find a flaming skid-mark across my brain or something. Whatever it was, it was transient. We don’t know where it came from, what it was, or where it went, but at least for now, it’s gone.

The hospital is no place to recuperate. They have too many sick people there. Judy and I walked the halls, sat in chairs in the reception area, and visited all night. By mid-day today we had helped the doctor’s decide that since none of the tests had come back positive so far, we should probably just check out of the hospital, go home, and get some rest. They’ll call us if they find anything.

In the meantime, except for being lack-of-sleep goofy, we’re doing well. Judy was awesome, as always, and shepherded me through the process. Now, I feel fully alert again. And, like I’ve said before: It’s good to be here.