So this morning, I got up bright and early so I could take the bus into town with Nick and get in early to the hospital only to realize that drop-ins didn’t start until 10:15. Bah. So, I hung out at Starbucks and drank copious amounts of coffee while reading We Need To Talk About Kevin, a rather disturbing book about a reluctant mother with a sociopathic son, until 10 rolled around and I headed up to St. Pauls.
Thinking being in there right when they opened would be a good thing, I was hoping I wouldn’t have to wait long. No dice, the wait for walk-ins was “about an hour”. Curses.
They did the usual checking of the information, and gave me a sheet of paper in which I saw what my doctor was actually looking for: a temporal lesion. Excellent, just what I always wanted. A lesion!
Anyway, I continued reading my book, and became mildly annoyed by the two men sitting next to me having an extremely loud conversation about whatever was on the TV (I believe it was the Mulroney inquiry, which I could not be less interested in) but there was nowhere to move to. Alas. On the upside, my book is really good, so it didn’t seem that long before they called my name and took me away.
Really glad I got Nick to help me take my tragus ring out last night. I barely had time to yank out my nose ring & hair elastic before they had me lying on the creepy table telling me to shut me eyes and hold still for 5 minutes. By the way, Providence Health Care: You should really mention that sort of thing on the prep sheet. A lot of us have body jewelry that doesn’t come out easy, especially in downtown Vancouver. I googled and found out on my own, but what if I’d gone by your “No preparation necessary” disclaimer? Hell, it took Nick & I about 10 minutes to get the damn thing out. Granted, most of that was finding the needlenose pliers, but I bet it’d take even longer if I was say, in a hospital WITHOUT needlenose pliers.
My tragus feels weird. First time in 6 or 7 years there hasn’t been a tiny little ring with a bright blue bead on it. Poor tragus.
Anyway, the five minutes went by pretty fast, although I can’t say I was terribly productive with said five minutes. Like my high school habit of self deprecating humor as a self-defense mechanism (leading to absolutely TERRIBLE self esteem, because if you constantly tell yourself you’re worthless, eventually you start to believe it — I got better) I spent the 5 minutes thinking up worse case scenarios, generally revolving around the “I’ll be dead in a month and Nick will have some cute young thing on his arm at my funeral” theme. While walking to the skytrain, I then called Nick and insisted that he’s not allowed to bring a date to my funeral. I instead suggested having me taxidermied and mounted on a stand in our livingroom. Apparently this is “creepy”. Pah, I say.
I’m not entirely sure the “My brain is going to explooooode!” train of thought is the most healthy, but I figure it’s better than realistic worries which already consume far too much of my day. I continue to be neurotic and terrified of the “damned-if-i-do/damned-if-i-don’t” aspect of “Well, if there’s nothing wrong, I get to live with crippling migraines for the rest of my life, but if there’s something wrong, then there’s something wrong IN MY BRAIN.” thing. Seems much more fun to focus on worst case, but extremely unlikely scenarios, right?
Damn you, Nick. NO BRINGING A DATE TO MY FUNERAL.
This is a late comment and probably something that has been brought up before, but nevertheless: Isn’t the fact that you have *crippling migraines* a good indication that you have something wrong in your brain already?
No. Could be hormonal, could be thyroid, could be … who knows what? Could be lots of things that aren’t the brain.
Ah, fair enough. Haven’t you been checked out for those other things though?