So the opthalmologist finally called me back at the end of the day and I got to ask him all the questions I could think of, which weren't many. I am still royally pissed at him. I had to practically drag information out of him. I understand that he is just an opthalmologist and not a neurologist or a neurosurgeon, but he's all I've got right now, and even though he doesn't want to be pinned down to any definitive statement, he's got to give me something to go on for now if I have to wait a whole month before I can learn more.
On the other hand, I've had the whole weekend to kind of come to terms with the initial shock and start educating myself on the subject a little bit. If we had been sitting face to face in his office on Friday when he told me the news I probably wouldn't have been able to come up with as many questions as I did this evening.
On the other hand, one of the things I found out was that since my carotid artery is involved, I shouldn't engage in any strenuous exercise, such as weight lifting. Wasn't it this guy's responsibility as a doctor to tell me that right off the bat? For all he knew, I could have been doing weight lifting all along! I could have had a stroke!
Yeah, I am still plenty pissed at this guy! Wait'll I tell Dr. Ma and the colleague with expertise about it!
Showing posts with label opthalmologist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label opthalmologist. Show all posts
Monday, October 13, 2008
Trying to get an appointment with the neurosurgeon
So the fancy neurology eye doctor guy is actually a neuro-ophthalmologist. I finally looked it up. I feel stupid. I didn't even know what kind of a doctor he was. I've decided that I don't like him. Nyah! He called me on my cell phone while I was driving to tell me what I already suspected, that I have a tumor behind my right eyeball. A benign tumor. Well thank God it's benign, eh? "Good" I said. I think maybe that threw him a little, because that's all he told me. "Well, how big is it?" I asked. He gave me measurments in centimeters, which I couldn't picture. "The size of a grape, a golf ball, a tennis ball?" I asked. "About the size of a golf ball" he said. "You should go see a neurosurgeon" he said. And then he just kind of left me up in the air. You'd think he'd never diagnosed somebody with a brain tumor before. "Do you want to somebody here in town?" he asked me. "Yeah, sure" I said. What was I supposed to say? I don't know one neurosurgeon from another. Hey, man, you're the fucking doctor! I think he just pulled a name out of thin air. This was at 4:00 Friday afternoon. I scribbled the name down on a scrap of paper while I was stopped at a red light. The light turned green and I had to drive a few more blocks until I got to a place where I could pull over. Then I immediately called the neurosurgeon's office. They had closed at 3:00, would reopen at 8:00 Monday morning. I would have to wait all weekend to even be able to find out how soon I could get an appointment. It was a long scary weekend full of uncertainty. Monday morning, I watched the hands of the clock as 8:00 rolled around. I called the instant I could. "Next available appointment is Nov 11" I was told.
! ! ! !
You've got to be fucking kidding me. Lady, I've got a brain tumor! (Of course, everyone who calls their office has a brain tumor. Get in line!) I'm supposed to wait an entire month before I can even get a prognosis?!?!?
This is unacceptable. I'm calling the neuro-ophthalmologist back and get a different referral. But his office doesn't open until 9.
The second eye doctor, the colleague with the expertise, he and Dr. Ma spoiled me. They were so sweet and caring. They took care of me. The colleague even called the neuro-ophthalmologist himself for me while I was there to get them to sqeeze in a timely appointment for me. I didn't realize how lucky I was to have such sweet and caring doctors as those two. Now I'm on my own I guess. Have to learn how to navigate this maze by myself. Just like everyone else.
! ! ! !
You've got to be fucking kidding me. Lady, I've got a brain tumor! (Of course, everyone who calls their office has a brain tumor. Get in line!) I'm supposed to wait an entire month before I can even get a prognosis?!?!?
This is unacceptable. I'm calling the neuro-ophthalmologist back and get a different referral. But his office doesn't open until 9.
The second eye doctor, the colleague with the expertise, he and Dr. Ma spoiled me. They were so sweet and caring. They took care of me. The colleague even called the neuro-ophthalmologist himself for me while I was there to get them to sqeeze in a timely appointment for me. I didn't realize how lucky I was to have such sweet and caring doctors as those two. Now I'm on my own I guess. Have to learn how to navigate this maze by myself. Just like everyone else.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
part 2
So finally my old glasses are so scratched I can hardly see out of them even if the prescription was still appropriate, which it's not. I seem to be developing good old age-related farsightedness on top of my lifelong nearsightedness and maybe it's time for bifocals (ugh!). This is aside from the scary right eye vision loss. And on top of all that I know I'm going to have to qualify again at the rifle range soon for my job. I haven't had to do that since before the vision loss started. I'll never qualify with my eyesight the way it is now, and my glasses all scratched up and outdated. It's time to bite the bullet. I have to get new glasses. I have to face reality in an eye doctor's office.
Of course I don't have a regular eye doctor, as I don't have a regular anything else doctor either. But one of my co-workers has this eye doctor who she says is an absolute artist when it comes to fitting you with the correct prescription, so off I go to this wonderfully sweet, kind, gentle, soft-spoken Korean eye doctor. She does all the usual tests and then some others I've never had before. She puts in the drops and shines the bright lights (which glare excruciatingly in my hyper-sensitive left eye, and, frighteningly, disappear completely in my half-blind right eye). She has me look into the thing like a video game and hit the clicker every time I see a light wink in my peripheral vision. She only has me do it with my good eye, though. I'm thinking I could have done it with my bad eye as well - I still do have peripheral vision with that one, after all.
Dr. Ma is very concerned. "Your left eye is better than your last prescription" she tells me. "And the optic nerve is very healthy. But your right eye - " She pauses. She is trying to break it to me gently. She's so sweet. I know it's serious. I've known it for a long time. I was just too chicken to find out before now. But now I'm ready. Better late than never, eh? "Your right optic nerve is - very ill" she says.
"Very ill." Aw. That's such a mild way of putting it. She wants me to come back tomorrow (tomorrow!) and see her colleague who has more expertise "with these sorts of cases".
Okay. So I take a half day off which ends up being a half day + an extra 45 minutes (good thing my boss is a fairly flexible type), and I sit through another eye exam. More drops, more excruciatingly bright lights, and I have to wear a protective film strip behind my glasses for the rest of the day to protect my dilated pupils. Shit, if I'd known it was going to be like this, I would have made the appointment for the end of the day instead of for lunchtime!
So after all this, the colleague with the expertise tells me that my right eyeball is stuck, not rotating properly, and something is causing "a problem" with the optic nerve. It might be a thyroid problem, it might be a "mass". He doesn't want to say "brain tumor". He doesn't want to scare me. He doesn't want to say anything definitive without further tests. "You should probably get an MRI" he says. He's going to refer me to a neuro-opthalmologist.
My health insurance is a PPO instead of an HMO. "That's good" he says. "This way we can send you where we want." The one they want to send me to has an office 15 minutes from my apartment. But he's booked up months in advance. The expertise colleague calls the office and wangles me an appointment for next week.
"Can I still get new glasses?" I ask. "I really need new glasses, look at these!" "No, I don't want you to throw your money away if your vision might improve" he said, and sent me off to the neuro-opthalmologist.
So I still need new glasses!
Of course I don't have a regular eye doctor, as I don't have a regular anything else doctor either. But one of my co-workers has this eye doctor who she says is an absolute artist when it comes to fitting you with the correct prescription, so off I go to this wonderfully sweet, kind, gentle, soft-spoken Korean eye doctor. She does all the usual tests and then some others I've never had before. She puts in the drops and shines the bright lights (which glare excruciatingly in my hyper-sensitive left eye, and, frighteningly, disappear completely in my half-blind right eye). She has me look into the thing like a video game and hit the clicker every time I see a light wink in my peripheral vision. She only has me do it with my good eye, though. I'm thinking I could have done it with my bad eye as well - I still do have peripheral vision with that one, after all.
Dr. Ma is very concerned. "Your left eye is better than your last prescription" she tells me. "And the optic nerve is very healthy. But your right eye - " She pauses. She is trying to break it to me gently. She's so sweet. I know it's serious. I've known it for a long time. I was just too chicken to find out before now. But now I'm ready. Better late than never, eh? "Your right optic nerve is - very ill" she says.
"Very ill." Aw. That's such a mild way of putting it. She wants me to come back tomorrow (tomorrow!) and see her colleague who has more expertise "with these sorts of cases".
Okay. So I take a half day off which ends up being a half day + an extra 45 minutes (good thing my boss is a fairly flexible type), and I sit through another eye exam. More drops, more excruciatingly bright lights, and I have to wear a protective film strip behind my glasses for the rest of the day to protect my dilated pupils. Shit, if I'd known it was going to be like this, I would have made the appointment for the end of the day instead of for lunchtime!
So after all this, the colleague with the expertise tells me that my right eyeball is stuck, not rotating properly, and something is causing "a problem" with the optic nerve. It might be a thyroid problem, it might be a "mass". He doesn't want to say "brain tumor". He doesn't want to scare me. He doesn't want to say anything definitive without further tests. "You should probably get an MRI" he says. He's going to refer me to a neuro-opthalmologist.
My health insurance is a PPO instead of an HMO. "That's good" he says. "This way we can send you where we want." The one they want to send me to has an office 15 minutes from my apartment. But he's booked up months in advance. The expertise colleague calls the office and wangles me an appointment for next week.
"Can I still get new glasses?" I ask. "I really need new glasses, look at these!" "No, I don't want you to throw your money away if your vision might improve" he said, and sent me off to the neuro-opthalmologist.
So I still need new glasses!
Friday, October 3, 2008
Dagnabit.
I am not going to bother with paragraphs today, except for this one. This will be fairly stream of consciousness because I have to get this stuff off my mind just now.
So I went for the three and a half hour eye exam with the neurologist eye doctor today, and he said the same thing the second eye doctor said - that it's either a thyroid problem or a brain tumor. Only even he would not say the words "brain tumor". "It might be a tumor" he said. It's a little like the one and a little like the other and not quite exactly like either of them, not exact enough for a real diagnosis. Nope, we need to do more tests. So now I have to go for two MRI's, one of my brain and one of my eye. I had to ask where to go to get them. He looked at me as if I had suddenly started speaking pig Latin. "Well, you could go across the street" he said. I'm not that stupid. I am actually aware that there is a gargantuan hospital across the street from the specialist eye center. No, mr. fancy eye doctor neurologist guy, you're not helping. "I'm the one who never goes to doctors, remember?" I said to him. "I have no idea how to navigate the health care system." And I never wanted to have to learn. I was kind of hoping I'd just live to a disease-free moderately mature oldish age and then one day just keel over suddenly, never having darkened the door of a doctor's office my whole life long. I have a horror of doctors. So naturally and of course it is now my karma to have to be seeing more doctors than you can shake a stick at. He realized how clueless I am. He gave me explicit directions to the MRI office in the gargantuan building across the street, thank you, that's what I was asking for. So I put on my little temporary celluloid sunglasses to protect my eyedrop-induced dilated pupils from the overcast daylight, walked into the gargantuan building across the street, and made two appointments for the two MRI's. I made one appointment for a Saturday and one for 6:45 a.m on Yom Kippur morning. I always take Yom Kippur off from work, but I don't go to synagogue anymore, so that was perfect. I can quietly go and get my brain scanned and nobody at work will know about it. It's bad enough I couldn't think up a good enough excuse to get today off when we're already short-staffed, so I told the truth and said I had to go in for a doctor's appointment. I didn't say why I had to see the doctor though, and it's nice that they're not allowed to ask. I had to sign a Hippo form (honestly, that's what I thought she said) - the one about who, other than doctors, they are allowed to share my medical information with - and it was lovely to check off the box labeled "Nobody". No spouse, no child, no other person. I authorize NOBODY to know about this. Yes! I decided long ago that if I ever got a serious illness I would try to keep it a secret. Lo and behold, now's my opportunity. Lucky me. I have lots of reasons for not wanting anybody to know. And I do mean not anybody. Not my parents, not my siblings, not my friends. I don't want to burden the people closest to me with a terrible knowledge they can't do anything about. I don't want to find myself talking about it all the time, or at all for that matter. I don't want people treating me differently or feeling sorry for me. I don't want to find my conversation suddenly taken over by the subjects of doctors, treatments, symptoms, diagnoses, insurance, etc. etc. etc. And I don't want to find myself getting all self-absorbed and dramatic, as I've seen some people do. I would just rather not let anybody know.
On the other hand I do feel a need to tell somebody, to talk about it a little bit, just to get it off my chest because it is a little too sharp to entirely hold inside in silence. Like letting out a burp.
So, here we are. God bless the Internet. I can talk about it to total strangers and nobody gets hurt. Now I've told you, and I feel much better. Thanks for listening.
I'll be back with my inspirational words of wisdom when I think of some.
So I went for the three and a half hour eye exam with the neurologist eye doctor today, and he said the same thing the second eye doctor said - that it's either a thyroid problem or a brain tumor. Only even he would not say the words "brain tumor". "It might be a tumor" he said. It's a little like the one and a little like the other and not quite exactly like either of them, not exact enough for a real diagnosis. Nope, we need to do more tests. So now I have to go for two MRI's, one of my brain and one of my eye. I had to ask where to go to get them. He looked at me as if I had suddenly started speaking pig Latin. "Well, you could go across the street" he said. I'm not that stupid. I am actually aware that there is a gargantuan hospital across the street from the specialist eye center. No, mr. fancy eye doctor neurologist guy, you're not helping. "I'm the one who never goes to doctors, remember?" I said to him. "I have no idea how to navigate the health care system." And I never wanted to have to learn. I was kind of hoping I'd just live to a disease-free moderately mature oldish age and then one day just keel over suddenly, never having darkened the door of a doctor's office my whole life long. I have a horror of doctors. So naturally and of course it is now my karma to have to be seeing more doctors than you can shake a stick at. He realized how clueless I am. He gave me explicit directions to the MRI office in the gargantuan building across the street, thank you, that's what I was asking for. So I put on my little temporary celluloid sunglasses to protect my eyedrop-induced dilated pupils from the overcast daylight, walked into the gargantuan building across the street, and made two appointments for the two MRI's. I made one appointment for a Saturday and one for 6:45 a.m on Yom Kippur morning. I always take Yom Kippur off from work, but I don't go to synagogue anymore, so that was perfect. I can quietly go and get my brain scanned and nobody at work will know about it. It's bad enough I couldn't think up a good enough excuse to get today off when we're already short-staffed, so I told the truth and said I had to go in for a doctor's appointment. I didn't say why I had to see the doctor though, and it's nice that they're not allowed to ask. I had to sign a Hippo form (honestly, that's what I thought she said) - the one about who, other than doctors, they are allowed to share my medical information with - and it was lovely to check off the box labeled "Nobody". No spouse, no child, no other person. I authorize NOBODY to know about this. Yes! I decided long ago that if I ever got a serious illness I would try to keep it a secret. Lo and behold, now's my opportunity. Lucky me. I have lots of reasons for not wanting anybody to know. And I do mean not anybody. Not my parents, not my siblings, not my friends. I don't want to burden the people closest to me with a terrible knowledge they can't do anything about. I don't want to find myself talking about it all the time, or at all for that matter. I don't want people treating me differently or feeling sorry for me. I don't want to find my conversation suddenly taken over by the subjects of doctors, treatments, symptoms, diagnoses, insurance, etc. etc. etc. And I don't want to find myself getting all self-absorbed and dramatic, as I've seen some people do. I would just rather not let anybody know.
On the other hand I do feel a need to tell somebody, to talk about it a little bit, just to get it off my chest because it is a little too sharp to entirely hold inside in silence. Like letting out a burp.
So, here we are. God bless the Internet. I can talk about it to total strangers and nobody gets hurt. Now I've told you, and I feel much better. Thanks for listening.
I'll be back with my inspirational words of wisdom when I think of some.
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