March Madness, Part 2: The Second ER Visit

The saga continues…

Sorry if when you read this it seems as if I am disgusted with the entire medical field.  For awhile, I was.  It seems like I hit every incompetent doctor in the city. 

To give you an idea of what I am talking about, this is me in full spasm trying to open my eyes and mouth as wide as I can.  Obviously my depth perception is gone since I can only see out of one eye and my speech gets really slurred.

As instructed, I called my regular doctor and made an appointment for Tuesday morning.  That morning his office called and said he was ill and would not be in that day.  The headache was still really bad and my face was still disfigured and paralyzed on the right, so I didn’t want to wait around. Teenagers don’t deal well with that sort of thing unless you can establish a long-term relationship with them because they get too distracted and I work with teenagers.  In fact, I was supposed to be conferencing with over 100 students that week.  So, that left me with an urgent care clinic.  The doctor there saw me and was most concerned about my high blood pressure.  They all wanted to know what blood pressure medication I was taking and couldn’t seem to understand that I had never had high blood pressure before this.  I had to repeat that at least four times for every doctor I saw.

Him:  “They didn’t keep you overnight for that?”

Me:  “Nope.  They just told me to follow up with my regular doctor.”

Him: “They didn’t give you any medication for it?”

Me: “No.”   (Note:  He didn’t give me any medication for it either.  When I asked about that, he said “We’ll see what the neurologist has to say.”)

He was more concerned about the “seizure-like” symptoms on the left side of my face than the paralysis on the right side of my face and called the neurology department for a consult.  He reported back that they didn’t think it was anything serious and he would put in a consult for me.  “But if I were you, since you have private insurance, I’d start calling around and see if you can get in anywhere else.   It could be several weeks before someone in our system sees you.”  It was several weeks—seven weeks to be precise.  He also suggested that if I had any new symptoms or any inclination that I go to a different ER because they might be able to get me a consult sooner.  I had gone to the University Hospital ER because that is the hospital my PCP is affiliated with and I hadn’t been impressed with Methodist ER who had misdiagnosed me with Bell’s Palsy the first time.  University Hospital is also the facility that treats the indigent patients in the area.  I really like my PCP and several of the other doctors in the UT system I had been referred to for other things.  However, there can be a long waiting period.

I started on my way home and my right eye closed completely again making it hard to drive and I began to feel very light headed like I was going to lose consciousness even.  So, I turned around and went to a different ER.  When they triaged me, my blood pressure was again very high (187/104) and my pulse was over 100.   The twitching had gotten really bad as well.  (My experience living with this for the past seven weeks has taught me that the twitches occur when I am trying to override the paralysis on the right side, i.e., when doctors tell me to try to open my right eye or open my mouth as wide as I can or when I am trying to appear as normal as possible.  The muscles in my face tend to overcompensate and become hyperstimulated, causing the twitching.)

To make a long story a little shorter.  That ER visit was mostly a waste of time as well.  The doctor there basically said he had no idea what’s wrong with me.  Why neither ER could scare up a neurologist to come have a look at me I don’t know.  They put me on some narcotic anti-convulsants and said don’t drive or go to work while you are taking these.  I was supposed to make a very important presentation at a conference in Houston that weekend that I had spent three years preparing for—it didn’t happen.  There was no way I could present in the condition I was in.  They also did nothing for the hypertension or erratic pulse.

To be continued in Part 3:  The Useless and Inept Neurologist