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It’s been a long time since I posted here.

So much has happened over the past year since I was first trying my hand out in the “mommy blogger” world.  I then got so busy blogging everywhere else that I neglected my home.

It was also two years ago last week that my husband’s business partner was in a catastrophic car accident– a day that certainly changed our lives forever.

He was paralyzed shortly after taking out loans on the company’s PAID OFF equipment to float debt from the bad housing market (people stopped needing trees removed when the subprime mortgage crisis hit) and also to cover the debt he racked up while going through his messy divorce.

We were left with the debt ($75,000 of it) and no viable way to pay it off.

I was 9 months pregnant and collecting a tiny check on maternity leave from the state, my husband ran the operations of the company– but he can’t sell to save his life, so keeping the business was out too.

Eventually we were forced into personal bankruptcy.  In fact we just went to court last week.  It’s been a huge mountain of pressure on my chest for six months now and i’m happy to say it’s almost behind us.

But this time two years ago, his partner asked to borrow our car to go where he was going that day.

He was taking his son to the doctors for a check up and didn’t think his big truck could fit in the parking garage.

He’d also been medicating himself at that time because of the divorce and something in me felt very uncomfortable giving him my car.   I remember feeling so strongly that my husband and I got into a huge fight about it that morning.

Because I wear the pants (kidding), my husband told him no and his partner eventually talked his ex-wife into giving him her car– which he destroyed later that day when he got distracted and did something dumb (I dont want to post deets w/ a lawsuit going down).

Now two years later (exactly one day before the statute of limitations was set to run out), the other driver sued Joe’s partner and his ex-wife as the owner of the car for her “pain and suffering” (she wasn’t hurt but she did find out she was pregnant at the time of the accident and I think had rough labor….maybe? But all was OK in the end)

Anyway, that could have been my car.  That could have been me named in this lawsuit (b/c the insurance is in my name)– on top of everything else we’ve had to go through this year.

And quite frankly, i’m not sure I could have handled it.

This year has just been so incredibly hard personally, financially, emotionally and spiritually.   Thankful we’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

As many people know, I work with lawyers. I’m quite fed up this past week watching many of them be unnecessarily nasty, gripe about nonsense, pick fights with people in list servs, blogs, whatever.    Shoot, i’ve even gotten a taste of the poison– and i just think wow, it’s so hard to be THAT miserable when you’ve come through what I have.

When you’ve bootstraped yourself up from the point of ruin, you don’t have time to sit online and gripe all day.  You live for each moment and do your best with what you can.  No time to sweat the small stuff.

So before I start name calling and stabbing people, it’s good to be back here.  Moral of the story– listen to your gut, trust your intuition and quit getting bent out of shape over nonsense.  Life is way to short to do otherwise.

It’s bad enough that most of our tech and customer service jobs wind up in India in a sad attempt to cut out the “overpriced” American worker.

But now our MEDICAL PATIENTS are flocking to India, thanks to the greedy health care providers that won’t meet their needs here at home.

CNN featured a story today about global patients, or patients that travel abroad because they can get cheaper (and arguably better) treatment than they would in the US.

One such story in the article featured a woman that didn’t have insurance but needed a relatively simple heart procedure to save her life.  She was ultimately  quoted $175,000 for the procedure– which the doctors knew was totally out of her budget.

Yet because she needed the procedure to save her life, the woman ended up traveling to India and having the entire procedure done (including travel expenses) for under $10,000.

That’s a huge difference and really quite sad that American people would have to take their medical “business” to India because of the greed and corruption here in the US.

The story also reminded me of Michael Moore’s latest movie “Sicko” (and whether you love him or hate– this movie is a MUST SEE), where 9/11 victims traveled to Mexico to get the lung treatments they couldn’t afford in the US.

The whole situation is just totally unconscionable to me.

Number one, we are in the middle of a recession.  We can’t afford any more American dollars going overseas.

And number two, I can’t understand how these health care executives sleep at night.  When did we get so concerned about turning a profit that we started to justify HUMAN BEINGS suffering like that?

Listen to the mentality of the Indian doctor featured in this story:

“We [surgeons in India] want to make a profit, but we don’t want to profiteer. We don’t want squeeze people and I think American industries should also think that way,” Jha said.

I agree with this doctor 100%.  Especially when someone’s life is at stake.

And maybe, just maybe if all Americans adopted this philosophy, we wouldn’t be in the big, greed created mess that we are today.

Photo courtesy of Flickr creative commons author Tourist_on_Earth

So I had a fun weekend.  It all started on Friday night as I was finishing up articles and playing with the baby.  Out of nowhere my eyes started to tunnel and I lost 99% of my vision for about 3 minutes.  Needless to say I panicked and called my sister (who is a nurse) to tell her I was having a stroke.

All I kept thinking was Oh my god, I’m gonna collapse and die and my baby will be alone here in the house!  It was scary to say the least.

So anyway, my nurse sister made me take an aspirin and told me to get my butt over to the ER.  I then called my husband in a tizzy at work and told him to get home and take me to the hospital (thank God he’s calm by nature lol).

Waste of Time Visit Number One

We got to the local emergency room in Voorhees and because I clearly wasn’t dying, we were forced to sit in the waiting room for 5 hours before they called us back.  So Joe and I watched Wife Swap and then Super Nanny and made fun of the other people in the ER in a sad attempt to pass the time.

Eventually they called me back and started running tests to see what the heck happened to me.  They did a CT scan to rule out a stroke (which thank god came back clear), but they were stuck on my prior medical history of meningitis and optic neuritis that I had  when I was 10.

I actually got meningitis after spending the day at a local water park (Dorney Park near Hersey PA to be exact) and the virus attacked the optic nerve behind my eyes.  I went completely blind for 7 months and was told I would never see again (but they didn’t know we believe in miracles and my eyesight did end up coming back much to their surprise).

I digress.  Anyway, they asked me if I had ever been treated for MS and explained that MS tends to strike within 15 years of optic neuritis. (Now mind you, I was officially panicking at this point).  But unfortunately, the neurologist was gone for the night so they sent me home and told me to follow up with an MRI first thing Monday morning.

More Strange Symptoms

We got home from our excursion at 3 am and literally crashed from exhaustion and ER boredom.  BUT, when I woke up the next day around noon my body was completely stiff.  I felt like I had 2×4’s inside my forearms and calves and I could barely hold a cup of coffee.  My hands were also asleep and stayed that way for a good 6 hours.

So again, trying to be logical, I assumed it was a side effect of the steroid shot they gave me the night before.  But when I called the ER to let them know what I was experiencing, they told me to come back in because that was definitely not a side effect and I needed to be seen.

Officially panicking again.

I then called my mom and she decided she didn’t want to play around with these doctors anymore and got a hold of the neurologists at the University of Pennsylvania that used to treat me as a child.  They also wanted to see me personally so I had to take another trip back into the city yesterday afternoon to get checked out.

Party in the Ghheeettttoooooooo

OMG it was crackhead night in the wonderful city of Philadelphia.  We were actually sitting in the waiting room and this lady comes strolling in off the streets.  She’s loud as can be and says “I just had a heart attack not too long ago and I’m having some pain and I think I need some pain meds and I don’t want to wait”.  I’m not sure what the lady behind the desk said, but all of a sudden cracklady starts screaming “Don’t make me get out this chair and beat you with my bag!  Don’t make me kill you…..oh you don’t know who I am….don’t make me kill you!”

Within a few seconds security came over and separated her across the room and threatened to throw her out.  So she announced to the waiting room that she’ll calm down but she’ll kill that woman if she keeps running her mouth.

OMG was I dying!  But wait, it gets better (and I will eventually get into what they said was wrong with me).

So I end up in the overflow bed in the hallway and crackhead lady is in the room directly across from me.  She’s slurring her words and SCREAMING at the nurses that she’s having a heart attack and needs something for the pain….preferably percocet.  So the nurse nicely says that they are going to give her morphine and something else incase its a heart attack and she starts freaking out again that morphine doesn’t work for her and she needs percocet.

So in the meantime, they told her to put on a gown so they could do an EKG.  So big fat crackhead lady gets BUTT NAKED and walks out to the main nursing station to ask the security guard to help her tie her gown.  Meanwhile she is tripping over the EKG wires and carrying on about her pain meds.

Then crackhead lady starts screaming that her “room ain’t clean” and wants someone to give her a broom because she shouldn’t have to sit in this filth. Well no one brought her a broom so she starts sweeping the hospital floors with her bare feet!  She was literally making piles of crap and kicking it into the hallway.

Then crackhead lady makes an announcement to me that they left a cup of urine in her room and she’s putting it in the hall.  I just smiled and tried my hardest not to laugh in her face.

Two minutes later the nurse asks her for a urine test.  They sent someone in to ask her if she was using crack and she went BIZERK.  In her best indoor voice possible (note my sarcasm) explained that she “don’t do crack, and maybe she’s done some cocaine before, but she’s had a hard life and WHY YOU ALL UP IN MY BUSINESS ANYWAY! IM SICK OF THIS– JUST GIVE ME MY PAIN MEDS!!”

Then I could tell crackhead lady got a bright idea.  She took the pee cup, looked at me, ran out into the hallway and grabbed the other pee cup while giggling and whispering to me that “she’s clever”.

I was laughing so hard and really didn’t know whether or not to tell her nurse that she just stole someones pee, but i figured she would stab me so I just kept my mouth shut.

But even before they could test her pee, the nurse gave in and gave her some meds to shut her up.  Literally within 10 minutes of getting her fix, she got on the hosptial phone and called everyone she knew while folding the 20 blankets that the stole from the cart– just like she was chillin out in her own living room!

It was seriously the funniest thing in the world.

My diagnosis

Now that I just went on a complete bunny trail about crackhead lady, I should probably get back to whats wrong with me.  Apparently I still have to go in for an MRI to rule out MS (the techs were gone by this point), but the neurologist thinks I am having “acephalgic migraines” or “migraine aura without pain”.  Basically its a migrant that attacks your vision and other body parts but doesn’t cause the traditional head pain.

I almost thought she was joking at first.  I have never in all of my life heard of a migraine without a headache!  I thought a migraine was a headache.  But lo and behold, its a real neurological condition and can cause you to lose your vision anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours.

Super huh?

But like I said, I still have to get a few more tests done before they fell comfortable with that diagnosis.  So I’ll keep ya’ll posted.

But in the meantime, if you’ve ever head of silent migranes or get them yourself, chime in!  I’d like to hear if you also swore you were having a stroke

Sheesh.  I need a vacation already.