Yes, we are still on March 17th/18th if you are having trouble following along with my ramblings. I know the details are probably not needed, but this is for me as much as anyone reading it.
Did I mention that Nick 'slept' all night in what looked like a very uncomfortable chair next to my bed? No way was he going to leave my side, despite my brother and sister-in-laws offering for him to use their house (remember they were on that spring break trip to Florida that I was so envious of). Neither of us slept much. They checked me all the time to make sure I was still OK. Oh, I forgot to mention that I got pain medicine in Iowa City! Remember that headache that started all of this? Yeah, it hadn't gone away. But the pain medicine helped some. Not completely because I was limited on what I could take- I needed to be alert for the checks they did so very often.
One of the neurologist doctors came in that morning. He asked me what I thought was happening. I informed him that I had a blood clot in my sinus'. I was 'sort of' correct. And mainly not. I had a blood clot, that was confirmed. The name was something I had no idea what he was saying. A few days later I asked the nurse to write it down for me so I knew exactly. What he had said was that I had a Cerebral Venous Sinus Thrombosis (basically: cerebral- in the head, venous- in the vein, sinus- on the outer part of the brain, thrombosis- blood clot). He even drew a little picture. He answered any questions we might have, which we didn't have much because we were still taking it all in, and said they would be in with the whole group in a little while.
My sister was really wanting to help out in some way, and we didn't want her around the sick girls, so she headed to Iowa City to hang out with me so Nick could head home to relieve my parents and give the girls a little normalcy during this whole process. Megan arrived right about the time the large group of doctors/doctor students arrived to talk with me about what would happen next. I felt so important. We discussed possible causes, ruling out that a pregnancy or child birth caused the blood clot (neither of those happened recently) and thinking maybe it was an ear infection since my hearing was having issues. The doctors told us multiple times how "serious" this was. At one point I wondered if he thought I wasn't taking it seriously- which I was, I just didn't understand it completely. He schedule an appointment with the eye doctor (vision issues can occur with this type of thing) and the ENT to see if an infection caused the blood clot. He said we had to get my PTT numbers up to a therapeutic level so they could start me on Coumadin, which I would be on for 6 months or so. After the doctors left Nick headed home to the girls and Megan and I hung out. If I was going to be off work I wanted to watch the Iowa NCAA game. No sooner had that come on then a guy with a wheelchair showed up to 'drive' me to my eye doctor appointment. Megan and I got a tour of the hospital and our tour guide was a hoot to chat with. The eye doctor appointment went great (seeing 20/20 with no signs of problems). At the end of the appointment we mentioned that we needed to get back to the room so we could watch the last part of the game, to which the doctor said he would turn it on via his computer so we could watch it (with him of course). We watched the end of regulation play and then headed to the lobby to wait for our 'driver' to show up (watching the game on our phone at that time- cannot miss overtime and the amazing ended- Go Hawks!!). We made it back to the room and soon after the ENT showed up to check me out. He said there was no way the blood clot was caused by an infection in the ear and everything looked good (but my hearing was still not normal).
Megan left and I ordered some dinner, FaceTimed with the girls and settled in for the UNI basketball. Oh, during that time my PTT numbers became therapeutic! Which meant I could start the Coumadin! I took my first dose that evening. Remember how they checked me all the time- just happened to turn out that they were drawing blood during the finale of the UNI game. I held as still as I could and tried not to move and mess the nurse up. Go Panthers! Three Iowa teams in the second round- must be our lucky year! :) Then I tried to get a little sleep (while still being woken up multiple times a night to be checked on).
The next morning the doctors came in and told me that we now needed to get the INR numbers therapeutic so we could figure out the correct dosage of Coumadin that I would be on long-term. Goals- always good to have goals and numbers that I needed to hit. Although I didn't have a real impact on how fast I was going to get there, at least I knew where I needed to get. On Friday my INR number was 0.9. At the time I thought I needed to get it to the 2.5-3.0 range before I went home. Saturday morning I was 1.0. This was going to be a long process.
To be continued...
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