Last week was chock full of appointments with various people for my strokes.
My first stop was Dr. Fanale, who gave me *another* TCD to check that my PFO was, indeed, fully closed up. And … drumroll please … it IS! =) Three cheers for nitinol (the interesting metal that Sam researches, and which my “patch” is made of) and the cardiologist who implanted it despite the doubts that it wasn’t actually there. What’s more, Dr. Fanale said he might write me up in a journal promoting TCD, since it did such a good job at finding the PFO when everything else — TEEs, CT scans, etc — failed. I’m all for that! The TEEs were miserable!
Second, I had my “here are the results” meeting with a group of CU grad students who assessed my aphasia. There were a lot of them — six students and their supervisor — and over the course of two days, they came in two by two and asked me an endless array of questions. I had to repeat rhythms that they tapped out on the desk, draw a picture from memory (four times!), recite items on a fake shopping list (also four times), recall details from stories they read to me, etc. Basically, every boring thing you can think of, I did.
Anyway, on Friday Ben and I were escorted into a room with all six clinicians-in-training, plus their boss. That’s pretty intimidating, to begin with; why are there so many of them? I felt like I was in a glass cage, like on that show, “10 Years Younger.” They went through each test and told me how I scored; on most of them, perfectly, and on some of them, not so perfectly. They diagnosed me with “mild anomic aphasia”, meaning that I have trouble recalling nouns occasionally. On the Boston Naming Test, which is a set of 50 cards, for instance, I successfully named all the pictures except for two: one was “yoke”, which I don’t fault myself for not knowing, and the second was “protractor”, which I couldn’t hit myself over the head for not remembering. I’d used one the day before at Sylvan! I guessed “Compass?”, which wasn’t quite right, but I was getting there. Eventually, the clinician gave me the first sound, “Pro …” and I got it immediately. But GRR!!!
They gave me several recommendations. One was to “Go to a neurologist and ask about neurotransmitter drugs.” I’m on several of those, I protested! I pressed the Boss Lady for names of the medications, but she wouldn’t give me any. I’ll ask Dr. Stapleton about it, but I think I’m on everything that might possibly help me. Suck :(
The other recommendations were pretty lame. “Involve yourself in more social situations where you have to talk to people,” was one of them. Melissa has been urging me to do this for months now, but I’ve got reasons for resisting. For one thing, what should I do? Outdoor stuff? (I get tired easily, but I DID do the Women’s Wilderness trip. Doesn’t that count?) Photography stuff? (There are some fun-sounding trips to the Butterfly Pavillion, for instance, but they go until 9:30. I’m in BED at 9:30.) Beading classes, which Melissa has been pushing for about a year? (Boring!) For another thing, I’m scared to talk in front of people. I feel like I say stupid stuff all the time. I know I don’t, that actually I sound rather intelligent, but if I’m worried about it all the time … why do it? Do I LOOK like a masochist?
Good night =)
