What happened to my head?
    a) The aliens returned and placed a probe inside
    b) The barber cur it a little too close on top
    c) I am a star in a local reenactment of a great battle in which the cripple always gets shot first
     d) I am having a 72 hour AEEG to try and catch my brain hiccups to figure out if they are seizures

When asked by an annoying woman in the elevator who just stared at me and asked "Oh My God What Happened to You?" I was tempted to go with A. Instead until noon on Thursday I am wired for sound. I wonder if I can tweak these things to get a decent radio station since we live in the last thing to pass as a city before God Forsaken nowheresville. We hit the event button twice, so hopefully we caught something already. Although it would be my luck to wear this darn thing for 3 long days and have a big episode as we are taking the electrodes off. I loved the instuctions that came with the hook up - don't shower while having 28 electrodes attached to you and a battery box recording them. Um, duh! If it itches (if? if? it started itching before she was done putting the leads on!) don't scratch. Right, cause in my sleep I can control that. That is why for sleeping purposes I get to add a snug knit winter hat over top of the ensemble. Do not stick anything sharp under the bandage to scratch your head. No chewing gum because it makes a nifty pattern on the EEG.
The one direction that has me a little perplexed is the fact that I am not supposed to use my cell phone except on speaker phone or text. Apparently the phones can interphere with the wires and electricity. Now I thought cell phones and their electromagnatism were deemed safe, yet I am being told not to put them near my head because they will scramble my brain's electric signals. I may rethink how often I use my cell phone!
The ditz who hooked me up yesterday had a philosophy that tighter was better for wrapping my head. I have deep red marks under my chin from where she put the chin straps. However, like a winter hat that is a size or two too small the bandage slowly crept upward trying to pop off my head. The suggestion from their office of sticking a nylon over it did not seem like a good idea as I have no bank robberies scheduled this week, so my poor mom had the job of carefully removing what was still on my head and then rewrapping the whole thing. Her chin straps are not gagging me so right there is a huge improvement. All the leads are covered and attached, and I have my trusty hat.
Thursday morning my mom has a DR appointment at the same office building where I need to go get fasting labwork done, so I may venture out in my new look to get labs done and then go out for breakfast. Breakfast is the easiest meal to find a vegetarian option in most restaurants. For fun I could decorate my head with stickers, because at this point dignity is a mute point. Thursday afternoon is dedicated to removing the leads (I have a solution to remove the adhesive that is holding them in place) and then washing my hair 3-4 times to get out all of the sticky conductive goop. Thank God I cut off the 11 inches when I did to donate!! I will be using the cheap shampoo to wash that many times and not my fancy organic expensive shampoo.
Until then I am wired for sound and my head is nice and warm!!

Yesterday I had to go back to the "big" shopping mall in the "big" town where my mom lives because I needed to have more prescriptions transferred and the pharmacy I use is in a store attached to the mall. I use public transportation to get to and from the mall, so I can be independent in getting to not just the mall but anywhere in this town which is a nice bonus. The above picture is of my treat that I earned after having to spend over an hour negotiating between two pharmacies and one insurance company to get a prescription filled. Thankfully, butterscotch frozen yogurt with chocolate topping is not a solid food and does not cause me to choke so I can enjoy this delightful treat - and as a bonus the yogurt is fat free, low sugar and the chocolate simply does not count.
It has been hotter than should be legally allowed, so yesterday I decided to bust out the full summer gear and I wore a skirt with a tank top and sandals. My AFOs were left at home in the air conditioning. A very nice stranger complemented me on my purple camouflage skirt and I had to laugh. I had never thought of the pattern that way, but it is pretty descriptive. It has artistic blotches of beige and pink and purple and white and navy blue on it, so I guess camouflage works to describe it.....for when I go to those girly post combat parties?
The mall is crazy, especially on a Saturday, so I wanted to include a picture of my typical view as I try to maneuver through the aisles and hallways.

My wheelchair is at butt height, which has benefits and drawbacks depending on the situation. ;) It also means that if you refuse to get out of my way after plenty of notice my foot rests are at a nice shin height.

I went in to use the restroom and there was a staff member doing a quick cleaning job of the bathroom. She went into the handicap accessible stall and then came back out and, well she let the stupid fall out of her mouth. She asked me "Do you need to use this stall?" I replied "Well, I pretty much have to seeing as I can't fit in the others.". Um, duh?
I am finding that some of the foods I am now stuck eating really are not that bad. I really actually like the infant oatmeal, and a brand of apple yogurt oatmeal that comes in a jar, and a microwave meal of macaroni and cheese and carrots (the noodles are so soft they melt as you eat). I tried a veggie one with zucchini, carrots, and some other veggies and heated up it tasted like a soup so I have more of the meat and veggie ones to try and eat as soups to get more protein and veggies. I had to throw away the freeze dried bits of fruit that they sell for babies as they were too solid for me and I choked. Choking is not on my list of things to do today, or any day. I also discovered that I can mix muffins with milk and make a concoction that is smooth enough to eat and really still yummy.
In a testimony to the cognitive changes of this delightful neurological disease, I have been so very carefully using a program on my iPod as a checkbook. Something told me to compare my available balance between my checkbook program and the bank. There is a $500 difference, not in my favor, and I have spent an hour looking over the transactions online and can not figure out where I screwed up. Thankfully I had some money left in savings that I transferred to my regular account and my mom is going to help me, and I have paid for the most expensive prescriptions already, but damn. How do you make a $500 mistake and not even be able to figure it out????

Time has always been a difficult concept for me to experience in the same ways as others; perhaps because of the lack of a natural sleep wake cycle that would frame things into intrinsic patterns of days and weeks. It is often the case that once I sleep, be it a two hour nap or overnight, an event is transferred to the distant part of my memory so whether it happened that morning or when I was five I experience it pretty much the same way. I realize that I am odd and that this probably does not make sense even in writing, because I know from experience with others and studying in college that this is not the way the human brain is supposed to be wired to work. What can I say, I was never manufactured to factory specifications. ;) I must say there are advantages to my odd sense of time in that I am highly adaptable to most circumstances and can adjust to just about any living situation or routine change.
So with this odd and unique method of experiencing time, and the ongoing process of adapting to and accepting the long term implications and progression of this neurological disorder, my coping has been a bit different from the standard expectations. In many ways this has already felt like "normal" (i.e. what I remember and am used to) for a long time and memories of my other life before this feel as far away as memories of the bedtime stories I used to listen to as a little girl. Yet in other ways it is still raw because each morning there is that briefest of moments where I forget, where everything seems as it always was, and then that moment ends in a sudden realization of all that has happened. It is one of the sweetest moments followed by one of the most bitter. I still long to have the freedoms I used to have, the freedoms of not having to rely on others to access the world in so many ways, the freedoms of movement unhindered in my body. Yet these freedoms seem almost like a dream that I had, almost like a faded old photograph of something that was so long ago instead of less than 18 months.
Even my dreams at night are changing. In my dreams I can still walk, still run, still dance but now at some point in my dream I realize or "remember" that these are things that I can not do and am confused. I may walk in my dreams but I am somehow unable to do the one thing that is necessary to save someone I love. I am becoming restricted even in my dreams. Slowly it creeps in where it does not belong.
I am not dealing with as much anger over this happening as I am dealing with a longing to just finally have answers, to have a diagnosis, to have a name for it and perhaps ideas of how to treat it. I still sometimes have bad days when I mourn for what I lost, even though it may feel like a long time ago it cuts into my heart very deeply now, but I have many more days when I am alive in the moment and thankful for all that I have been given. It is a challenge when new symptoms, or progressions of symptoms of the related dysautonomia continue to pop up, but I have never backed down from a challenge before. I would just really like to know what I am up against, and how best to fight it now and through times to come. Because I have miles to go before I sleep. :)

I am no longer allowed to play an at home doctor, not even on television, as apparently in failing to call for emergency assistance last Monday when I had the severe autonomic crisis and then treating the symptoms myself I could have very well suppressed my respirations to a point that when I finally fell asleep my brain could have "forgotten" to breathe. I had not considered the fact that all of the medications I took to treat the symptoms - pain medication, anti-nausea metication, medcations for spasms in my muscles- have the potential to suppress respitations in a normal and healthy body not to mention in a body in the midst of a hypotensive crisis. Have I mentioned that during these crises my thinking becomes a bit murky and not the most logical, probably because with a blood pressure at or below 80/40 the amount of oxygen reaching my brain drops a bit. My neurologist, my amazing and wonderful and incredibe doctor, pointed out my incredible stupidity to me, and in a very nice way. So now we have a plan for how to deal with these episodes and I have in writing a very basic procedure for any emergency care physician to follow should I need to call for emergency assistance. One of the reasons I did not call 911 was because I know that at the local hospital they have never treated anyone like me and I did not feel good enough to talk them through how to do so without killling me off. It is difficult being so complicated.
I also got in trouble for stopping a medication without permission because unbeknownst to me it is also used to regulate blood pressure in people with dysautonomia (that is not why I was started on it or was taking it) and so I was informed I am not to self adjust my medications anymore without explicit physician permission. Oops. Lets see, I also learned that it could take weeks to recover from that big crisis which may explain why I have been so fatigued, so much weaker, why the spasms have been worse, why I have been so nauseous again, and why I have had no appetite (although that does not seem to be slowing down the annoying weight gain - ugh!!). And that is as long as I do not have any more episodes - which I already had an average one last night that I treated appropriately where my blood pressure dropped to 90/38 and stayed in that range for about 3 hours. I pushed fluids, laid down, and monitored it with the plan in mind to call for help if I felt worse at any point. At no point did I feel like I was losing consciousness so it was not a horrid one.
We are also going to do pulmonary function tests since I have been more short of breath since the crisis, and it appears based on the asthma meter given to me in the hospital last December my lungs never returned to full function after that hospitalization. I do not have asthma, but my diaphragm was impacted by the severe muscle weakness. Other than that we are awaiting the results of genetic testing, I see the top specialist in the progressive spastic paraplegia in December, and after that visit I regroup with my nerologist who mentioned a possible assessment at an MDA clinic if we do not get a firm diagnosis from the PSP.
Today I go get my wheelchair, in just a few minutes we leave and I am very excited. Oh, and I also have to restart physical therapy because my legs are too tight - I can not straighten my knees anymore which makes standing hard and walking any steps harder because I rely on locking my joints for stability to walk.
I will update with info on my new chair and hopefully pictures later. I am such a dork excited about my wheelchair!

Yesterday was my appointment with Dr. A (who, now that I have seen his name in writing should be Dr.E but I am too lazy right now to change that) for an evaluation to obtain his expert insights into the movement disorder aspects of the mystery that has become my life. Once again I am incredibly thankful for a doctor who does not believe that MD represents Medical Deity and who realizes that, as the person trapped inside this body, I have a valuable perspective. He had me perform the wide range of neurological party tricks, most of which I suck at (note to self - if I ever drive again and am stopped for suspicion of drunk driving, I am totally screwed). That whole pointer finger to the nose thing looks so easy until I try to do it without my arm muscles shaking. And it sounds so simple to hold my leg up and not let him push it down, until with two fingers he slams my leg down over and over. Talk about ego bruising...a year ago I was able to pick up, carry, position and provide support for children with severe disabilities who weighted up to or even more than 50lbs.
So after his evaluation, he discussed his findings with me. Dr. A is certain that this is not a primary movement disorder like a primary dystonia or parkinsons. He is also certain that it is complex, complicated, and rare. His words "were you to present to us without any medical history and just your current symptoms, this would be a very complicated and difficult case. When you add in your history and the dysautonomia...". I saved him at this point and explained "I never seem to do anything simple. It is always rare, complicated, and an extreme challenge. Apparently it is against my genetic capabilities to follow a simple textbook anything." He laughed, but also agreed. So now that we know what it isn't, we are left with more questions. His opinion is that it is most likely something impacting my spinal cord given the presentation with my lower extremities, and he is concerned because I do indeed have increasing spasticity and tone in my upper back/shoulders which means that it is worsening. He mentioned a disorder called "stiff person syndrome" that they will be checking for by blood work, and also said he is concerned that the autoimmune disorder I was diagnosed with at 11 (and that has been greatly debated since then) could be attacking my spinal cord. He wants me to have a spinal tap, which is tricky given the fact that I am on blood thinners but actually better to do with me on the injections of lovenox than if I were taking coumadin. I have had a spinal tap before, about 9 years ago, and based on that horrid experience in which they missed and then ended up twisting the needle and as a result of their errors I ended up bleeding into the base of my spine I am going to agree only upon the condition of being unconscious. I can deal with the pain, but I find that adding unnecessary pain to an already painful life is unnecessary. Dr. A is now going to be a part of my neurology team, with Dr.CH as lead neurologist and Dr. SN as consult.
One huge success from yesterday was that I received an order for a new wheelchair. The one I have been using is a rent-a-chair that has horrible positioning and actually causes severe pain if I use it for more than an hour or two at a time. Part of this is because of my hip positioning in it, but mostly it is because I have occult spina bifida (the bones at the base of my spine are malformed) and the defect is a boney protrusion just below the layer of skin that receives pressure whenever I sit upright. I have not developed an actual open sore, but I have developed inflammation and scabs on this area from sitting. And as a result of the spina bifida, I have significant arthritis in my lower spine which also makes sitting on a poorly supported and cushioned surface painful. So yesterday after my appointment I went to the medical supply store and ordered a lightweight tilt in space manual wheelchair that could be here as early as Friday :) I had to call and have the Dr. fax them with detailed information regarding seating and/or cushions for seating but it should be taken care of as I have not received a call otherwise. New wheels!!! But to be completely honest, it was hard to order the wheelchair because as long as I was using a rented chair it left me with the illusion that I was only using it on a very temporary basis. Now that a wheelchair has been ordered and purchased for my personal use, it feels almost like surrendering a battle to this and admitting that no one things I am going to walk again any time soon if ever. That is hard, and it hurts. I am not giving up, but sometimes being hit in the face with reality is rough. So instead, I am going to figure out a way to make my new chair absolutely awesome - pimp my wheelchair anyone? :)