About three and a half weeks ago, on a Sunday, I started having this intense pain in my left eye. I couldn't look to my left, my whole eye was swollen, and my eye lid just wanted to stay shut - it felt so heavy to keep it open. By Wednesday I couldn't handle the pain anymore and decided to make an appointment with an Optometrist. When I went in the doctor was really....well lets just say we did not trust his judgement at all and wanted to get a second opinion. Although he did prescribe me some steroids as he thought I had a pseudotumor cerebri, which I had about 6 years ago back in highschool.
So I started taking the pills immediately which made the swelling go down but the pain was still there. We decided to stop by another doctor's office and see if they could confirm for us. Unfortunately, that just led to a different diagnostic and a referral to a different doctor. According to this doctor, he thought it was orbital cellulitis. My eye showed all the same symptoms except for the redness, which he had never seen it without it and so he referred me to another doctor.
By the time I had gotten to the 3rd doctor the swelling was completely gone. The doctor ran a series of tests which showed that there was quite a few symptoms that were not explained. He said that there were three different things it could be but that my symptoms were showing more of an optic neuritis but that the only way we would be able to tell would be a catscan because I was on the steroids which made the test they would normally do show nothing.
By this time I was feeling so awful because of the pain I just wanted to go home and do the catscan the next day. So in the morning I got up to do get it done. Unfortunately, it didn't happen. I was unaware that my insurance needed a pre-authorization before I could get it. So I left being reassured by the hospital that they would get a hold of my insurance and then call me once my appointment was scheduled. I didn't hear back at all. And by Friday when I called them they still had no answer for me which would mean I would have to go through the whole weekend in pain.
It was awful. I had lost a lot of the vision and the pain and gotten even worse with the pressure in my head I thought it was going to explode. My doctor did give me loratab along with some 800Ibprofen but even taking those on top of each other wasn't making a dent in the pain I was feeling. Most of the time I just cried. I couldn't read or study, it hurt to watch tv, it hurt to do anything. But then sleeping was hard because every hour or less I would be woken up with the pain. It was awful.
The next week they still hadn't done anything about getting it pre-authorized but on Tuesday, I was feeling so much better so I didn't bother calling them. I still was getting the pressure headaches and looking to my left was a definete no, but I could study again and read! By Friday I finally thought things were heading towards recovery I decided to head off to St. George for a girls night with my Mom, two little sisters and Mady. My little sister, Tiffany was in a dance competition on Saturday and they were coming and staying the night in a hotel. I wish it was the perfect weekend that I had in mind.
I thought Mady would be fine sleeping in a bed with me - but no. She did not sleep at all. My mom and I tired everything, at least she wasn't screaming. She was as happy as a lark, just playing and tlaking up a storm - "Mommy, swimming? Go swimming?", "See the moon?", "Tiffy and Bre sleeping? Shhh nigh-night", "G-ma go potty? Mady go potty?" And on and on and on. By 3:00am I had had enough. And drove her all the way back to Cedar and have Ray take care of her. The only problem with this is that my eyesight was awful at night and it was snowing. Thank goodness the Lord was watching out for me, otherwise there would be two more angels in Heaven.
The bad part about this was that I had to drive immediately back because my Mom needed to get Tiffany to hair and makeup at 6:00am. So that night I only got one hour of sleep. That whole day was awful. I was feeling sick because of the lack of sleep. But then my arm was acting really weird. My hand was really swollen and it kinda felt like when you get your blood pressure and there's that lack of blood, tingling feeling. And then there were times that it would be completely numb with a constant dull ache. That night we ran to the ER because it was spreading up my arm.
Long story short - after a few more times of being rushed to the ER and the doctors not knowing why I was having all the different symptoms of fevers, body aches and shaking, my arm being weird, plus my pressure headaches, I can finally say that I have had 3 days of no pain! The doctor finally gave me the ok to get off my fat pills (the stupid steroids that made me gain 10lbs!) and said that they had no idea what it really was. But I really don't care if it was a tumor, blood clot, pressure, whatever. I'm just glad that I am finally pain free and back to normal! Just in time for finals too! Wish us luck, we really need it!
Oh! And my sister did amazing! She won second and forth in her divisions. And don't mind Breanne, as I said Mady kept all of us up, which made for a long day.
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