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A Healthcare Sinkhole – Once You’ve Fallen In, They Keep Digging

A Healthcare Sinkhole – Once You’ve Fallen In, They Keep Digging

Last updated on: June 17, 2015 at 9:14 am by Tom Zampino

A Healthcare Sinkhole – Once You’ve Fallen In, They Keep Digging 2015-06-17T09:14:16-05:00 Tom Zampino

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The call came within a day or two.

The MRI’s clanging and clanking and suffocating were still with me.

But now, something new. Something perhaps not totally unexpected. Something that, apparently, was going to radically consume the next few months of my life.

If not end it.

“Get over to the nearest emergency room right now. You have a brain aneurism. Let’s not have you stroke out before you get there.”

Words that you don’t want to hear from your neurosurgeon.

Duh.

To paraphrase Dorothy Parker: “What fresh hell is this?”

I would soon learn.

Well, at least it explained the recent horrific headaches that had kept me hunched over at work for too many hours in my darkened office. Not to mention the double vision which had turned my driving into a nightmare – especially for my passengers!

Despite my quite unmanly protestations to the contrary, my wife – no stranger to my obstinance – made sure that I followed through.

I spent the next 24 hours in the emergency room (as there were no rooms to be had) being pricked and pumped and primed with multiple doses of Heparin to thin out my blood.

The next morning my neurosurgeon came by, as did the hospital’s neurologist, the resident on call, and about five other well-credentialed healthcare providers whose names I didn’t catch.

Nor did I really care to.

Interestingly – perhaps I should say, confusingly – the hospital’s radiologist wasn’t 100% convinced, at first, about my diagnosis after another MRI had been conducted during the night.

But soon enough he was convinced to act with the same extreme caution.

So, the diagnosis was consistent.

A brain aneurism had been located in a very difficult to reach spot.

Options were then discussed.

Brain surgery drilling down from the top (to somehow isolate and then repair the bulging vessel directly).

Or perhaps surgery reaching up from the groin to the brain (how the heck is that even possible?).

Or, for now, just kind of living with it and waiting things out as we keep a close eye on its growth since, at just about 4 mm, I was informed, the aneurism was relatively “small” – 7 mm being the typical, minimum size when surgery is not easily ruled out.

That last option, as appealing as it sounded, meant that a stroke was possible at any time. But – small comfort – probably not a fatal one. I would have to decide whether I could live with that, both literally and figuratively.

Some quick Google research, and then some quick self-diagnosis, convinced me that, yes, it really was smallish. So it was realistically, scarily, but possibly waitable.

Before any definitive conclusions were reached, however, more tests were to be conducted.

First up, some type of electric impulse test for myasthenia gravis was suggested as a way to first rule that out as a possible cause of the double vision. That specialist reviewed the MRI results with me, and we discussed the location of the aneurism and the difficulty of reaching it surgically.

Now, if the MG test results were positive, we might then have to see whether there was a tumor on my thymus that would need to be removed.

That’s when I finally began to realize that I was rapidly sinking into a healthcare sinkhole from which I might never escape.

The MG test came back inclusive – it couldn’t be ruled in or out.

Just great.

Even more tests followed before any final decisions would be made.

Another MRI. Then an MRA of the head and neck.

Then something very weird happened.

Another phone call from the neurosurgeon a couple of days later.

About that aneurism? Well, it doesn’t appear on the new MRI scan.

What?

No, you apparently don’t have one. Perhaps it was just some unclear imagery on the first one, resulting from some small movement during the scan.

(Or perhaps, as I thought to myself, we shouldn’t be so quick to rule out that some of my prayers had not been left unanswered.)

But heck, I was just glad that we caught all this before I underwent massive head surgery and several months of recovery time!

But wait, there’s more.

There’s this other thing that we’ve now found. Dissections in your carotid arteries. It was somewhat unusual, I was told, for both sides to be affected at the same time. But the good news is that no surgery would be necessary.

At least not now.

But we’ll monitor the situation for the next year.

One year later here I am.

Another MRI. Another MRA. I now await those results.

If I ever wondered why our healthcare system is so expensive, I wonder no more.

It’s a literal sinkhole. And it’s so damn hard to get out once you’ve fallen in.

But I’m fortunate, so I’m not really complaining.

Perhaps I’ll save that healthcare rant for another day . . .

Peace

Image Credit Here: DrOONeil via Wikimedia Commons

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