Health Update

Since many of you are asking I figured I would give an update from my medical tests last week.

For those of you that don't know I had an episode at the end of April where I lost feeling in my right hand and I couldn't control the movement of it. It was followed immediately by a migraine. When the feeling came back in my hand I had a warm sensation going up my arm like I had in my legs when I was diagnosed 3 years ago with nerve damage in my legs. I called and made an appointment with my neurologist. He thought it was a complicated migraine (migraine preceeded by stroke-like symptoms) but wanted to test me for clots and previous strokes just in case. Last week I had a TCD test. This test involved an ultrasound that looked for blood clots. Another part of the test was injecting me with tiny bubbles to check for a leak or hole in my heart. There has been a strong correlation between migraines and a hole in the heart. If the test was negative I would just hear my normal heartbeat and if it was positive I would hear a little chirping. The test was off the charts with lots of chirping and for a long period of time. The doctor doing the test was amazed that I had two children without any health issues. My neurologist reported the results and said that it was strongly positive. He also said that the episode with my hand may have been a mini-stroke. He prescribed an anti-seizure medicine to prevent the migraines and an aspirin to prevent blood clots that could go through the hole. There is a cardiologist that is doing a study on this with the Ohio University of Medicine (I think that was the one) and he works out of a local hospital here. He referred me to him and thinks he will need to do a cardio catherization. I am also having shortness of breath and on two different, random days my heart kept racing. They will need to look and see if there is something else going on too. To make matters more fun my doctor thinks I should have my tubes tied but of course I can't do that until I meet with the cardiologist. I am waiting on the nurse from the neurologist's office to set up my cardiologist appointment.

I was shocked to find all this out. I have had a lot of migraines but didn't think much about them since Exedrin migraine usually takes care of them. I have been using that a lot lately. So now I'm trying to take things a lot easier and TRYING not to get upset with my children. I can just feel myself getting worked up sometimes and I'm a lot more likely to get migraines when that happens. I've cut back on my exercising too until I see the cardiologist.