After 18 months of investigation, my primary doctor, still continued to find the reason my head felt like it was on a roller coaster the moment I attempted to fall asleep, perplexing. My husband continued to be my medical supervisor in the middle of the night until fatigue finally won out around 1-2am…and I fell asleep.
My “heart attack” symptoms for the most part had fallen to the way side. Now it was positional vertigo the moment I went to bed. So, back to the doctor I went.
She wasn’t giving up on me! There were two more places to explore to possibly explain my symptom. She offered me two paths – ENT (Ear Nose and Throat doctor) or Neurology.
I went Neurology. Again on the hierarchy of “what could kill me, leaving my kids without a mother at far too young an age”, I knew I wouldn’t die of a sinus infection (despite how horribly painful they are), but I could die of a brain tumor…not that I would ever have that. That would be absurd.
I got my MRI with and without contrast not even a bit worried. I actually LIKE MRI’s – no one can touch you, you get to just lay there…and even the clicking sound and the beeping sounds don’t bother me. Thankfully I am not claustrophobic. I went in thinking “well this for SURE is going to come out clean…I need to start accepting the fact that perhaps it IS menopause”.
After the scan I met with the neurologist in her office. She was very very nice, very professional and highly rated on all the medical sites where former patients are able to give their opinion on their first hand experience with said doctor. And she was recommended by my primary doctor. That was good enough for me.
She walked into the room I was waiting in for ten minutes, introduced herself and said “well, radiology has just reviewed your scan and everything looks normal”. I wasn’t surprised. She said “would you like to see the scans, we can review them image by image”. Being a curious person and someone who loves data I excitedly said YES PLEASE!!! When do you ever get an opportunity to look at your brain?
So we looked at several images. All of a sudden she said “wait a minute, I think they missed something”. She zoned in and said “do you see this?” to which I said yes, very clearly – it looks like a cotton ball on my brain.
She asked if she could step out and call radiology. I said “no, lets just call radiology from right here in this room”. I am sure she wasn’t happy with this…I wish I had insisted she put the call on speaker, but hearing her questions and her statements gave me some indication that this wasn’t normal.
She hung up the phone and explained that what is so interesting is that sometimes, like 1 in a 100, you do an MRI trying to find the reason for a symptom, and you never find it, but you end up seeing something else incidentally.
I won’t go into the long dramatic story…but to summarize I was told it was a brain bruise. That perhaps as a young child I had trauma to my head and that most likely it was nothing and lets just do another MRI in three months and see if it has changed”.
I left feeling relieved and thinking “clearly it can’t be bad..and my brothers use to stuff me in our football shaped toy box and roll me down the 14 stairs to our basement only to slam against the wall at the landing”
Maybe I did have a brain bruise from early childhood trauma.
Why Not Me 