Thanks, guys. It's not as bad as feared AFAIK. It happened in my right eye. I had 2 aneurysms that burst. I was very strange. One happened Saturday morning and then again on Tuesday morning. Both times I had a spot in my vision that appeared matte gray. It started in the upper left part of my eye and gradually spread across the top, then down to where it literally blanked out the top half of my vision. When I closed my left eye, I could only see my face from the bottom of my nose down. Scary.
Anywho, by the time I got to my optometrist on Saturday, everything had cleared up and she couldn't see anything wrong. She did say though that it might be the warning signs of a stroke, so she wrote me a letter for the emergency room and told me to get my ass over there. Which of course I didn't because I'm a dumbass.
Anywhay, flash forward to Tuesday morning and the same thing starts up again. This time it only lasts like 15 minutes or so, and wasn't nearly as bad as Saturday. Only this time after it cleared up I was left with a couple of blind spots in my vision. One was rather small and in the lower part of my vision, the other was about twice as big and just to the right of the center. When I closed my eyes the spots looked the same as when you stare at a bright light and look away. I've actually had something similar happen a couple of times before but it always went away fairly quickly and I figured the same would happened in this case. It did not. Around 2:30 nothing had changed so I went back to my optometrist. She dilated my eye and was able to see that the blank spots were actually 2 hemorrhages inside my eye. She asked what the people in the emergency room told me on Saturday and wasn't very happy when I told her I didn't go. She told me to tear ass up there so I did.
Once I got admitted and the doc saw my eye and read the optometrist's letter, he ordered a full workup on me. The fear was that somehow I was producing blot clots and a stroke or brain aneurysm wasn't too far off. I gotta say, my butthole puckered up a bit at the news. So they gave me a room and the tests started. I got a blood work screen for cancer (there were concerns I had developed Lukemia). I got an ultrasound on my heart, neck and eye. I got 2 cat scans and then an MRI. You may remember from my last health issue that me and the MRI tube don't get along so well. The hospital didn't have an open MRI, so it was the tube or I'd have to wait who knows how long to get an open MRI somewhere else. They gave me 4 little white pills that they said would help with the anxiety and shoved my in the tube. I noped out at first but after a few minutes I convinced myself to get it done. It took about 15 minutes and I seriously had to find my happy place to get through it.
All the test came back negative. No cancer, not clotting not other aneurysms anywhere else. I went to a retina specialist yesterday and her best guess is that my higher-than-normal-but-not-high-enough-to-be-dangerous blood pressure, coupled with my higher-than-normal-but-not-high-enough-to-be-dangerous EYE pressure (that's what they measure with that puff of air), tripled with a smaller-than-normal-but-not-small-enough-to-be-dangerous opening for the artery that goes into the eye, somehow allowed pressure to build up in the artery and boom. She said that as far as she could tell this is an isolated incident, but it would be good to avoid strenuous activity that required bending over (like gardening, pegging, etc)
As far as the blind spots (the hemorrhages), the ophthalmologist (I saw one of those, too) didn't know if they would clear up or not but the retina specialist all but guaranteed they would, maybe in a month or so. I haven't really noticed a difference since Tuesday.
So now I get to take aspirin everyday and the eye doc gave me a prescription for some drops that are supposed to lower the eye pressure. I have to see my primary doc in a couple of weeks where I'm sure I'll finally be put on high blood pressure medicine. I have no idea if anything else is going to happen but I can tell you I'm about as jumpy as a jack rabbit during duck season.
Oh, and while I was in my hospital bed and the little girl was filling out my if-the-worst-happens-during-your-stay-who-gets-your-stuff paperwork, she asked for my religious preference. I said "none" if there's a blank for that, which she said "oh yea, of course". I said, "well, what I mean is that I'm atheist, if that's on there I'd like that checked". That kinda of took her back. She said I was the first one she had come across at the hospital. So all those religious nutters that says atheists flip the switch when their health is threatened, ya no.
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