Originally Posted by
zoobernut
Hmm so yesterday was interesting and will probably end up costing a lot of money.
I woke up totally fine. Ate some food drank some black tea like I always do. Got my kid ready for school and took him to school. Went for my normal mile and a half hike that I always have to do in order to get to work. No more strenuous than normal. Feeling great. Set up a GoPro to capture some time lapse of a construction project on the way to work.
Get to work eat some more food have a glass of orange juice and some more tea (mint this time no caffein) then go to an hour long work meeting. Get out of the meeting and go work at my desk for the next couple hours. Feeling great.
Get up from my desk and walk down the short hill from my office to my works front office. When I walk into the front office start to notice something strange. The sensation of moving from really bright to the dark office isn't going away very quickly. Everything is shimmering silver and white and I can barely see. I suddenly start to feel really distracted. Is it because of my eyes or something else? I feel like I am having a hard time talking. Stepping over my words mispronouncing stuff, forgetting words that I should know. Is that noticeable or am I imagining it?
I pick up a heavy box from the office with a computer and a couple laptops in it and carry it up to my office and sit down at my desk. I then look up at my desk and it is almost completely white. I thought there was something wrong with my computer at first then realized my peripheral vision around the monitor in my office was the same. I start to feel a little bit more weird and wonder if the things I thought I was just imagining were actually really happening to me. I go talk to our emergency response coordinator and he takes my blood pressure. I sit down in his office we take my blood pressure a couple times. I drink a glass of water brought by one of my coworkers. I call my wife. I try texting her but I can't see my phone screen.
One of my coworkers who is also a nurse comes in to talk to me. He thinks it might be an ocular migraine. I have never had migraines before. We sit and talk and eventually they both leave and I feel like I am doing better. I put my head down to rest. When I pick my head up again 15 minutes later my vision hasn't returned and instead has actually gotten much worse. I go to the front gate of my work and have them radio call the emergency response director again. He meets me in his office and takes my blood pressure again. I don't have any other symptoms that I can concretely tell them about yet so they suggest we go into one of our office rooms and lie down. I am down with a pillow under my head and my vision begins to return I am feeling a little better I think. Then my feet and hands go completely numb. Not just ooh pins and needles but like somebody just shot me up with Novocain in my limbs. It starts creeping up my face first my upper lip then the tip of my nose then my cheek leading up to my eye.
At this point I was beginning to really have a hard time talking. Slurring my words, forgetting the right words, not being able to remember normal easy to remember information about myself. They make the judgement and call 911. I remember the first responders showing up. They are my friends. We live in a rural area and have a volunteer fire brigade they are the first to arrive. I feel strange. I can't remember their names. I distinctly remember describing the numbness spreading over my body and then telling one of them I felt like I was swimming in molasses.
At some point the paramedics show up. I don't know if it was a long time or they just got there quickly but they are asking me questions and poking me and sticking things to me. They make me roll over onto a stiff board. Moving was very difficult. While the paramedics were trying to ask me questions I remember feeling like the world started to fall away. The vision problem from earlier while it went away for a bit came back with a vengeance but different. This time it was more dark and fuzzy instead of shiny and silver. Earlier I felt like I was looking at the world through a chrome pipe. Now I start to feel like I am falling down into something and the walls are closing up around me. I am vaguely aware of them picking me up but I am not talking anymore at this point. I wonder where my shoes are or who is going to bring my camera gear from my office. It is extremely bright and hurts my eyes. I think we are outside.
Now we are in a cave. Now looking back I realize it must have been the ambulance but I can't remember. I told them to take me to the health center. I thought I just needed some rest and they could drive me to our local health center and let me rest there.
I felt like I was lying on my back forever. Later they tell me I was totally unresponsive. The world has receded around me and everything is dark and fuzzy like looking through a black pillow case. I feel totally awake on the inside like one of those nights where you are thinking too much and you think you are awake all night but then the alarm goes off and you open your eyes to daylight. Thoughts were running through my head. Whats going on? Where are they taking me? What is going to happen to me? Am I going to be blind forever? How am I going to be a photographer if this is how I see from now on?
Again it gets very bright. At this point I don't notice anything around me but I notice it gets very bright. Then I am in a tube. In and out of consciousness. Still unresponsive. I remember thinking wow it is loud. Why are they giving me a face mask? Where am I? Instrument panels were really close to my face. Back into darkness into my head. I have one brief moment where I notice the brightness and then one more where I notice the noise then nothing.
I start to wake up I notice wherever I am has changed. Suddenly they are pulling me out into the hot air it is loud and windy. I was on a helicopter they tell me. I am confused. I had no idea where I was or how I got there. When I went unresponsive they decided to fly me up to San Jose over 3 hours north of where I live to a hospital that specializes in strokes.
They thought I was having a stroke. I still feel totally weak and out of sorts and disoriented and confused as they take me into the ER.
The ER was loud and buzzing with activity it was very confusing to me. I start to come out and notice more and more detail. My vision is still wavy I am really hungry and thirsty. They say I can't have anything. They pump me full of all sorts of stuff along with a saline IV.
In the end they did a huge battery of tests on me, cat scan of my head, chest xrays, all sorts of electrodes all over my legs and chest and arms to keep track of my heart. There was nothing going on that they could see. They did see one precursor anomaly in my heart but they just tell me to go to a cardiologist.
Ugh what a crazy and expensive 24 hours. No fun at all. I still feel really weird and my mind is having a hard time grappling with losing almost an hour and a half of time. I am not used to feeling like that at all. I hope it never happens again. I wish I could remember the helicopter ride and could have taken photos. I feel really bad for freaking out my family and causing all the craziness when at this point I am beginning to wonder if anything was real or even happened. My experience from the inside is so drastically different from what people observed on the outside it is crazy.
TLDR: I got sick somehow but doctors couldn't tell me what happened all after getting medivac'd to a hospital because I went completely unresponsive.
My first world problem in all of this is I live in a good enough country with good enough hospitals that I could get a helicopter ride to a hospital and get treated immediately and not die but it is going to cost an arm and a leg.