Comparing Chairs

The chairs in the radiology waiting room at Rose Medical Center in Denver are brown. Stripes alternate: dark brown curly designs that harken back to a more Victorian era and thin lines stringing together light brown circles - round baubles hanging like decorations on the Christmas trees taken down only a couple weeks ago.

The waiting room is half-filled with other patients - an older couple murmuring quietly in the corner, a Hispanic woman with three toddlers that play with a new baby as she speaks to the receptionist, a woman a couple years older than me reading a magazine, her tan purse on her lap. The brown chairs snake their way along the walls behind them all, dipping in the middle to create a make-shift division in between. I think of Mayo, with its mauve floral prints that will forever be etched in my mind.

At my one-year follow up with my neurologist at Mayo, we talked about the headaches I still get - a couple a week, most responsive to Advil, but about one a month that leaves me incapacitated, teathered to my couch or bed, trying for hours to sleep off the pain, even when it wakes me between dreams of headaches. He looked at me with concern, though his concerned face reminds me of a disappointed face that makes me think that I've done something wrong. Twenty six years of being a people-pleaser, I suppose. He told me that's not normal; I shouldn't be having them still. A few months ago, I made a similar complaint and was ordered an MRI. Apparently, it had shown a build up of fluid in my brain hole, but the doctors figured it would drain itself. Maybe it hasn't. He ordered a CT scan to see what's going on.

"Hi, my name is Erica Egge. I'm calling to schedule a CT," pause, "E-G-G-E".

"Hi, my name is Erica Egge. I'm calling to check on an order for a CT scan," pause, "Yes, I have my patient number," I read it off again, almost by memory. "Has the order been sent to Rose Medical in Denver yet? Does it have a note to call my insurance?" No, of course not. I give the number for MedSolutions and my insurance member ID. "It has to be noted on the order for the hospital to call them," I request, trying to hide the exasperation from my voice."

"Hi, I'm Erica Egge. I called yesterday. Has the order for my CT scan come in yet? No?"

It progressed thusly day after day. It took over a week for pre-authorization, but finally this morning I left my little third floor apartment for the hospital.

"Erica?" a middle-aged woman in scrubs called from a door to my right.

"I'm Erica," I stood upand walked to her, putting the purple cell phone that doubles as my safty-blanket back into my purse. She may have said her name as she led me down a linolium-floored hallway, but I don't remember it.

"Is it a subdermal hemotoma we're scanning today?"

I don't know what that means. "I had brain surgery about a year ago." Her eyes widened in the surprise I've come to recognize, even expect. "I'm doing fine, still seizure-free, but having headaches."

She opened the blond-stained wooden door to a testing room and walked in behind me. A slab of plastic covered in a white sheet with a small pillow for my head formed a make-shift bed sticking out of a large, white doughnut. I took out my earrings and held them in my hand as the bed began to move, jerking to a stop when the doughnut was positioned over my head. It was much quieter than an MRI, which somehow made it feel more ominous. A red light flashed through my closed eyelids. I began to pray. God, please watch over me. Please let me be okay. Please, I begged. The bed jerked back and forth as the machine emitted shots of radiation over my face to the brain behind it.

The ten minutes felt short and long at the same time when I heard a small motor propel my bed back out into the world, freeing me from my racing mind.

"That wasn't bad at all," I said to the tech, cheery with my brave face. Now it's just a matter of waiting. What happens if they find more fluid in my head? It depends. My favorite answer.

One Year Follow-Up Update 2

EEG showed no seizure activity!! Dr. So wants me to get a CT because of the headaches I'm still getting. Apparently my MRI in March showed some fluid in my brain hole, which was normal, but having surgery headaches at this point is not normal, so he's wondering if the fluid has grown. The results will dictate in part when I can start to resume risky activity like riding a bike or skiing. He'll call me with the results next week and tell me if I can start to decrease my Vimpat! If so, it'll be a long, slow process that will take a couple months. Caffeine and alcohol (minus vodka red bulls) can resume normal activity after I'm off the Vimpat.
All in all, pretty great news! Now just waiting for my insurance to approve the CT and hopefully I can get it done today - preferably early so I have time to get back to St. Paul and wash my hair before dinner out at 7!

Mayo Follow-Up Update

Mom, John and I drove down to Rochester yesterday evening, had sandwiches (me and J) and salad (mom) at Canadian Honker and stayed in a 2 queen bed room at the Hilton Garden - J in one bed, me and mom in the other. I was hoping to snuggle w my mom but no luck.
Woke up at 5:30 to a wake up call and two cell phone alarms. Got to Mayo at 6:15 but it wasn't open yet, so we went to Caribou for bfast. Eventually got in and went to 8th floor of the Gonda bldg to get my itinerary. They gave me a red pager and I thought they were going to call me up, but 7:25 came and I figured out that they didn't know I was there for my EEG. I went up and told them and fortunately the EEG station was at the other end of the hallway, so I wasn't late.
EEG lasted about 3 hrs and included a nap, reading out loud, looking at pictures, looking at strobe lights (yuck) and hyperventilating for 3 min (double yuck). After EEG, got blood drawn and had western breakfast bagel at Bruegger's for lunch. Hit up the billing dept to deal w the $9,440 that mom paid out of pocket in March when I was still fighting w COBRA. Turns out we might not get it back because it was used to pay for two MRIs that didn't receive precertification. We're gonna fight it but there's a chance we won't win. :(
Right now we're waiting to see Dr. So. He'll give us the results of the EEG and I'll ask about the headaches I still get.
Will give an update on our way home!
Xoxo
E

Fuit Flies

I saw my first fruit fly today. Every summer they invade my shoebox apartment, taking the kitchen by storm no matter how many dishes I do and how inaccessible my fruit is. June and July see my friends coming over for dinner and swatting them away from their faces as they sit at my table. I hate fruit flies with every fiber of my being. I'm thinking about getting a pet bat to keep them in check. Or do bats only eat mosquitoes? I'm not sure. Either way, this year I'm determined to keep them out. I'm not quite sure how yet, but I'm working on it. At least there was only one today, so I have a head start on the little monsters. I'll be damned if I can't have flowers in my apartment for fear of providing fodder. This summer, my apartment will be immaculate and will be declared a no-fly zone (get it? No fly? Like no fruit flies and no flying?).

This morning I finally paid a properly-calculated check to Mayo Clinic. Sadly, it was almost $2,000. I kept looking at the Amount Due box on the bill, checking to make sure I'd read it right, checking that the decimal point was really where I thought it was. It was. I lifted my pen to my checkbook, filling out every non-monetary or signatory line I could before slowly writing out the total amount, letter by painful letter. I hovered over the signature line, took a deep breath and looked away as I scrawled my illegible signature. I sealed and stamped the enclosed envelope and wrote the return address in the corner, adjusting my four-line address for the three lines given.

Like the fly: one down, many more to go.

Packing Tired Cobras

It's my second to last night here before I move back to Colorado. I'm sitting cross-legged under the yellow striped duvet that covers my bed. The left side of the bed is covered with scarves and t-shirts that still have to be packed and two legal pads that I need to find a home for. This morning dad and I picked up some cardboard boxes I found free on Craig's List - three long, skinny boxes with handles, two big boxes and one small square one. I won't need all of them, but as I put everything together, I'm surprised at how much stuff I need to get back to Colorado. Since I'll be back here a couple times over the next few months for weddings and doctor appointments, I'll be able to collect and bring back whatever I leave here, so right now I'm only taking about half of my things. Still, half is turning out to take up more space that I would've guessed. They're all things I've used though, not just superfluous junk, which makes me feel better.

Today I found out that COBRA has decided to reinstate me. I can't begin to say how amazing I feel. A current of nervous electricity ran through me as I opened the email and read, "Hi Erica, I got you approval for reinstatement". An enormous weight was lifted off of my Atlas shoulders. I started laughing in my car, parked in front of my therapist's office, looking, I'm sure, like a total nut job, not quite sure if I should welcome or blink back the tears that waited just behind my eyes. I picked my phone back up and my hands shook as I typed my reply on the little slide-out keyboard. Everything has gone so much better than I could have ever hoped - the surgeries, the follow-up, the insurance - everything. I guess I must've done something right!

I feel like there are so many things I want to write about, so many little experiences, feelings, thoughts that I want to word, like a river inside me that transforms into a sparkling, sunkissed waterfall as it leaves my mouth and flows onto the page. I want to write about packing and the conflicting emotions it brings, knowing that it's the right time for me to go but already missing my parents and my aunts; how I can look in a mirror and like what I see and not feel all of the insecurities I felt in the Bahamas; how I started to use my body again as I walked to the Sea Center (or whatever it's called) in the Bahamas for nine am yoga, and how I almost passed out more than once during that first class but every day got better and better as the young instructor taught patiently in both English and French, ("inspirer, expirer" = "breathe in, breathe out"). I want to write about them all, but not tonight. My heavy eyelids are drooping over the eyes I got peach-scented soap in when I washed my face this evening, which I take as my cue to go to sleep.

Goodnight