[our neighborhood Buddhist temple - just off the woods]

So where was it I left off?…Heading to the ER, right?

Well, the long & short of it is I got there. I had been expecting to have to wait a few hours – it was Sunday night, there were bound to be Privates with busted knuckles or babies with snotty noses. So I had shoved every conceivable time-passing distraction into my purse: iPod, my latest book, my day planner and a wrap to keep warm - I always freeze to death in ER’s.

So it turned out I was wrong. I lugged 5 lbs. of crap all the way up to Yongsan for nothing. I was the only patient to be seen & they shuffled me into the receiving room.

You know the drill: ID, blood pressure, temperature, ‘are you in any pain right now?’, etc.

But the Korean man working the receiving room was too busy typing what appeared to be the same irrelevant English sentence into a Word document over & over. Didn’t turn his head to look at me once. In fact, I don’t think he looked up at me at all.

About two minutes later the attending nurse shuffled in – very sweet & obviously very accustomed to his Korean manners. So very gently she began asking me all the questions, ‘what did you come in for’, etc. And then she proceeded to ask this can’t-be-bothered man if it was alright for her to go ahead & take me back and run the vitals herself. She actually had to ask the man 3 times before a solitary grunt could be heard.

She hooked me up & I began to tell the stupid tale of how I decided to get into a head-butting contest with the car…and lost. At this point the blood pressure machine finished & began squealing something fierce: it read 179/110. (The high end of normal is 120/80 – but you know me, I’m an over-achiever.)

The ER Doc (and I use that term loosely – I think he was 12) came in about then & I got to tell the whole tale over again. I should’ve just printed out cards to hand out.

He was about ready to dismiss everything I said until I mentioned that the only reason I came up to 121 was because the hospital already had my brain scans on file. Well, that woke him up a bit. He excused himself to review the files & a few minutes later came back to say he had consulted with my Neurologist. And since none of my lesions are vascular (meaning no blood) they felt fairly positive that I wasn’t in jeopardy of a brain bleed.

He started to order a pain cocktail IV when I stopped him.

“Is this the same IV as the migraine cocktail?”, I asked.

Well yes – turned out it was. So I turned it down. Unforutnately those don’t work on me. I looked the boy in the eye & said, “save your meds”. He was a little taken back – wanting to “help my pain” – but I explained I’ve been down that road & they’ve yet to find anything that works. Not even the hospital grade stuff. Besides, now I had to hop my embarrassed butt back home & it would probably be better if I was coherent enough to do that.

So yeah…that’s my whole super-exciting, bone-chilling, thrill-ride-a-minute tale of how I hit my head.

I was positive they’d keep me overnight, but they didn’t. So needless to say, calling Eric to tell him, “I’m heading back home on the 7:30 bus” was more than a bit humbling. All I could think was – great, now the man will never believe me the next time I get hurt.

But I made it home…with a sheet on “Understanding Concussive Syndrome” & how to expect my symptoms to stay around for a few days. Which they did.

I will say this…it was the first time I could actually tell the difference in pain between my usual headaches & just what a regular ol’ headache is supposed to feel like.

But three days later that plain ol’ headache was gone…only to be replaced with my old stand-by pain.

Tomorrow I hop the bus to Yongsan yet again. This time for my 3rd MRI.

A little nervous. I’ll admit it.

Out of the past 20 days I’ve had a headache 14 of them. They’re not as bad as last February…I don’t think. At least they’re not constant. But they’re there. Same low, burning, piercing pain right over my eye. Sometimes over the right; sometimes over the left.

So for now, good night. I’ve got to crawl in bed for I’m off to see the wizard & his whiz-bang machine again tomorrow.