What happened to me in the early part of the year that damaged my ablity to do anything or blog

I recently wrote a letter to Jill about what had happened to me health wise, as best as I know.   She gave me permission to use it here for everyone so I don’t have to retype it all.  As you will see at the end of the email typing can be a problem for me some days.  Some days are much better than others, but I have terrible neuropathy, muscle spasms, and arthritis.   I did edit for clarity, spelling mistakes, and to remove stuff that was for Jill alone.   Hugs

In January my primary care doctor took me off my heart medication controlling my heart rate so I could have my needed allergy shots.  I shouldn’t have been on it even though I needed it because I have life-threatening allergies that require me to have / use an EpiPen and the heart rate drug interferes with that working when needed. 

 So I was taken off the med and my heart rate soared far more than it was thought it would and stayed there.  I was in the 130s and 140s bpm, with spikes much higher.  Before the med it was high but not so high.  The high heart rate caused me not to be able to breathe.  I struggled to get air in and after three or four weeks as things got worse I suffered what my doctors now think was a TIA or mini stroke.  I suddenly struggled to speak, I could hear words but when I went to respond the words in my mind wouldn’t come out or I couldn’t find the word I wanted to use.  What came out of my mouth was mangled or totally a different word.  Now I normally mispronounce some words to be funny.  Like saying elephants as efahlants or some other word to be funny.  But this was seriously differently.  I couldn’t pronounce words.  Plus, my mind was full of fuzz, I struggled to think.  I couldn’t read stuff on the screens of my computers and couldn’t respond at all.  If I tried to reply, what I typed was like a third grader and sometimes made no sense to me at all.   Ron was desperately trying to help me but everything was wrong, I couldn’t talk to him to explain what was going on with me and I would get so upset, but Ron has over 16 years in various ICUs and realized what was wrong was some kind of stroke caused by a nearly constant heart rate over 135 and most of the time over 140 and struggling to breath.

 But in the land of medical treatment for profit, I couldn’t get even a call back from my former heart doctor’s office.  Side note, they called me back in late May after I have seen a heart doctor from a different group and then in June to ask me to schedule my appointment.  So by mid-March Ron had had enough and raised hell with my primary and they got me an appointment with a heart doctor taking patients.  That doctor looked at the heart rate and blood pressure readings telling me this was serious.  Remember, I was still struggling to talk.  As I already was unsteady on my feet and walked with a cane or walker, no one even took that into account. 

 So that doctor had me go through a nuclear heart scan that allowed them to do a stress test without me being on a treadmill.  They also did echo scans of my heart. During the test my sugar crashed, and also when they put the medication in to raise the heart rate I suddenly had trouble breathing.  My blood pressure readings were so far off the scale the nurse disregarded them and put in her own idea of what they might be by manually taking my vitals, but her monitor on the cuff was not working to her satisfaction so she put in numbers she felt were more appropriate.  They were made up as she recorded my diastolic as 40.  That is seriously out of acceptable range.  

 The determination was my heart was OK, good looking even with some recent damage and the doctor tried several drugs and got my blood pressure and heart rate down to an acceptable range.   The determination was that in his opinion after what every happen to me my continued breathing problems were making my heart react.  Basically, he passed the buck.

 So back to the allergist that started this so I could have my treatments.  He started them and I started to feel better almost right a way within a few weeks on that side, but he did a breathing test, and my breathing was very bad.  He had me do an x-ray and ordered a pulmonary test also gave me a referral to a pulmonologist in the hospital system he worked for.  But before I called to set up a new patient appointment, the hospital called me to tell me the test would cost me over $300 dollars for a half hours test.  I can not afford that.  They told me it was so expensive because it was being done in a hospital.  So I did not call the pulmonologist and I am waiting to see the allergist again to ask what to do.  I still have breathing problems, but they are not as bad as they were but if I get excited and try to talk I struggle to breath and when I come back to bed from the many times I have to pee at night when I first lay down I struggle to draw in air. 

 But the important thing is the fog in my brain is clearing up.  I still sometimes struggle but when this happened I simply had a head full of cotton, full of fog.  I couldn’t understand what I was trying to read, and there was simply no way to comment.  I would get so frustrated and angry.  But months passed before I could visit other blogs or even deal with any comments.  That let some haters who did not understand my repeated pleas to give me space to write horrible stuff in the comments.  I could hardly post videos I was trying to watch and laying in bed posting email links to stories from my devices. 

  I am not fully recovered, and my doctors think the way I am is as good as it is going to get for me.  I still get so frustrated, when tired I still struggle to understand and respond to things.  Sometimes I struggle to find words I want to speak and other words come out like before, mangled.  While Ron understands it is horrible when on the phone.    When I type sometimes, I read it afterward and it is gibberish.  Yet I must accept this and move on.  But it still is frustrating.  

  My muscles spasms are so bad that as I was typing this email I was jerking and hitting random keys.