The Day I Fell In Love With My New Doctor

If You Don’t Advocate For Your Health, Who Will?

So I published this piece about being grateful for my stroke, not to be confused with being happy I’d had one. Oh, no. I can get all Whiny Bitch (see yesterday’s article) about that mean twist of fate. But given how truly awful and even fatal these attacks on the brain can be, happening at any age, even in utero. so the person has their entire life to cope with them, I’m incredibly lucky mine was relatively mild.

In case you haven’t been keeping up, in a nutshell, here’s what happened to me. Don’t worry, no gory medical details to follow.

Twenty months ago, I had microsurgery to remove a piece of cartilage trapped in my kneecap. Just a scope as my surgeon called it. I knew what he meant; it would be the third one and counting. No big deal compared to other surgeries I’ve had.

A few days to a few weeks of recovery depending. In my case it was always weeks before I walked normally again, but then, I’m no spring chicken.

A day or two after, I knew something was wrong and not with my knee. Sitting was fine, but something was wrong with my gait and my balance. By accident, I discovered I had a bit of double vision around the edges. Scary to the doctors, but in the end, an eye specialist said not life-threatening.

When I pressed him for a cause of all this, he said I’d had a stroke during the surgery. Minor, but it affected my balance. He gave me some pills, but they haven’t helped much.

Hang on, I’m almost finished. So twenty months have gone by. The eye thing is a lot better says the doc, but I still feel like I’m drunk when I walk. I’ve adjusted, coped, and practiced gratitude. And I don’t leave home without my cane.

Then last week I had a checkup, and due to scheduling issues, I was assigned a new primary care doc. This new guy kept pressing me about the stroke. My symptoms and whether I’d had a brain scan.

I told him what I knew, which is that all the tests were negative for anything really bad, and the stroke had affected a nerve in my eye that affected double vision and balance. Some vision had come back, but since it didn’t affect my sight per se, frankly it never bothered me. I cared more about walking without falling, and as far as I knew, that would never change.

I thought the whole matter was done and dusted, but he found the scan in the computer.

“Do you know you have an issue with your cerebellum?” he asked.

“Sara Bellum?” This was news to me. I’d been told everything was negative.

He explained the cerebellum was the control center in the brain for motor function, including balance. It had been injured by an embolism, a blood clot that most likely was the cause of the stroke. No wonder I walk like I’m drunk.

Initially, I was tested for everything under the sun, I’d been cleared of major causes of the double vision that worried everyone. Massive stroke, Graves’ disease, brain tumor, etc. But this guy looked at the big picture, namely the scan, not just the report. He saw the clot that did the damage.

Are you bored by now? Imagine how I feel. Except there’s a happy ending. Possibly.

“Want to try some physical therapy?” he asked.

“What for?” I said with a roll of my eye. Are we back looking at my wonky knee as the cause of my stumbling gait?

“Let’s try to retrain your brain and get your balance back.”

That’s when I fell in love with him.

And why I’m dragging you down with my medical deets.

I didn’t have bad doctors. They tried to find the cause of a frightening symptom: double vision.

But it was his fresh look that introduced me to Sara Bellem’s sister. Hope.

In the scheme of things, I’m only wobbly when I stand and walk. Otherwise, I can drive, walk relatively fast, live by myself and take care of business. But I’ve lost a lot of motivation to move around, go for long walks or workouts at the gym. Some things take extra effort. I get more tired more easily. I need to push myself harder to do physical things.

I know that’s on me if I succumb to that lack of motivation. Remember, some people die of strokes. I just have to use a cane.

Now physical therapy may not work. But I have some hope, and along with a new spurt of optimism, I’ve taken the initiative to look up balance exercises in advance of my first appointment. Maybe I can make up for lost time.

I don’t blame anybody for my little problem, for something going wrong during the surgery or for not suggesting retraining my brain at the outset.

But here’s the thing.

I wish I hadn’t waited so long to advocate for myself because I know better. I’ve been around the edges of medicine for a long time, and I wish I’d been pushier about having my results spelled out for me. Because I know the brain is retrainable. I just got a little passive. And that’s on me.

So let this be a lesson. We need docs to take care of us. But we are responsible for fighting for ourselves.

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