Month: July 2008

I just wanted to thank everyone for their encouragement and prayers. I wasn’t sure if we were going to be able to find another neurologist for a second opinion without lots of expense. We called everyone in the Columbus, OH area and they all wanted me to go through the ER. NO ONE would let me just see them for an appointment.

Thanks to Gail McMonigle –  I have an appointment tomorrow afternoon in Cincinnati!! PRAISE THE LORD!!  I can’t believe this wonderful news and the fact that I get to be seen so fast! I know that’s the work of so many prayers. 

Good or Bad….at least I can have peace in knowing that I have done everything I can do before heading back to Haiti. My sister will take me tomorrow and we’ll leave Jose with all the kids!! So maybe you should pray for him too!

Side note: (We are still looking for a second opinion for myself. This morning was a hard morning but my first neurologist told me to double my pills. So that’s what I’m doing now although it just makes me a little more loopy than before if possible! Thanks for the continued prayers).

My sister Lori just moved into a new little town called Commercial Point. It’s a really cute little neighborhood right outside of Columbus, OH. We’ve spent the last several days here trying to escape stress! There is a cute little church less than a block away and we thought it would be great to send the kids to VBS there this week.

Excitedly –  the kids, my nephew DJ, my sister, and myself walked them down the little block to drop them off. I have to tell you that walking into the church my sister and I oddly found ourselves a little teary-eyed. It reminded me so much of when mom and dad had a little church in Calhoun, KY. The church was decorated to the max. Everyone so eager to help and yet they’re having a “teachers’ meeting” right when we’re supposed to sign in the kids! It’s typical little church! Signs are posted everywhere and you just can’t help but love this sweet little community church!

So we drop off the kids and walk back to the house so we can all crash for 3 hours while the kids are at VBS. So we head back to the church a little early to see how they end their nightly program. I see Malaya and Mikela dancing and singing songs on the front row. A small-built, nearly bald man is playing his guitar and even that made me a little teary-eyed! He was just the cutest little preacher guy. Their mission goal this week was 400.00. If they got their goal then he would let them draw a smiley face on his head. If they doubled their goal they got to shave his beard and then his whole head would be hairless. You saw all the little teachers looking to each other, nudge-nudge, smiling, laughing like – “Oh yeah, we’ll reach our goal!”. I mean it was just so cute.

Oddly enough I see Rosie being carried into the sanctuary with a little sweet old lady. I thought – of course! Rosie has found someone to carry her here just like in Haiti. She sat very quietly with her thumb in her mouth in the back until VBS was dismissed.

This little lady is sitting in the back of the church, probably in her 50’s, has the sweetest little disposition to her. I walked to this little lady and said – “That one is mine and I guess she found her a new best friend!” Well that lady didn’t smile at me at all. I asked her, “Was Rosie okay? Did she just want to be held all the time?”. She looked at me with a sour look and said and I quote, ” I didn’t get to spend anytime with the other  children because she was too busy not listening. She doesn’t seem to act the age she should.” I told her I was so sorry – that Rosie was 4 years old, from Haiti, born with Tetanus, a little hard headed, etc. etc. She nodded as she listened but kept that look like “Yeah, I don’t care what you say.” 

I told her – “well maybe I shouldn’t bring her back. I don’t want her to take away from YOUR MINISTRY while you’re here.” SHE SAID and I QUOTE – – “I THINK THAT IS A GOOD IDEA!”

Wow! How bad do you have to be to be banned from VBS? LOL!  I didn’t know whether to cry from embarrassment for myself or for embarrassment for the teacher. Here is the cute little preacher guy up front telling everyone to bring a friend! There couldn’t be more than 30 kids total. They’re trying to raise money for a mission and they don’t even want Rosie’s little quarters!!! 

I was talking to Lori about it and she just laughed and said – you just need to blog about it! 🙂 I’m thinking wow – what if I weren’t already a Christian and I’m bringing my child and the lady who is there to minister tells me it’s a good idea not to bring her anymore! Can you imagine if we did that in Haiti?? 

My sister and i have worked at VBS programs our whole lives. We know those little brats that cause all the problems. Maybe you tell the parent – “Little Johnny was wild tonight. I hope he is better tomorrow”. You don’t say – PLEASE DONT BRING YOUR KID BACK!!! LOL!

We might just bring her back tomorrow night for spite…..we haven’t decided yet 🙂

So I’m not sure what to do at this point. I was hoping by now that I would be feeling much better. That doesn’t seem to be happening. Despite taking all my new medications the last three days I’ve woken up at night in tears with horrible head pain. I was given medication to take in case of major pain but these pain pills completely knock me out. It’s very hard to function on any level at all when the side effects haven’t worn off until 2:00 pm each day.

I’ve had good friends and family tell me that I need to get a second opinion. So I’m debating on whether I should try to find another neurologist. Several have encouraged me to go ahead and take those extra tests because by now I should be functioning more normally. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

The only thing I know for sure is I’m not feeling any better and it’s very frustrating. I plan to call the neurologist tomorrow and see what other ideas she has. I may try to get a second opinion to be safe before I head back to Haiti.

So I just continue to ask for prayers. Prayers that I make wise decisions about my health right now….prayers that the doctors will be able to figure out what is going on…….prayers that the pain will go away…..prayers for poor Jose who is stuck with me and all the kids!

Jose, my mom, and myself headed to Lexington today unsure what we would find out. Both the ER doctor and the follow-up physician made us very nervous.

One of the first things that my neurologist said was she completely disagrees with both doctors! She said she read through their reports and then looked at the actual MRI herself.

ER DOCTOR: AVM, large abnormal blood vessel, follow-up MRI and cerebral angiogram, possible radiation/surgery for AVM – blames the AVM for right sided weakness, headaches,dizziness, etc

Follow-up Physician: AVM, abnormal blood vessel, possible stroke, URGENT follow-up with cerebral angiogram.

Neurologist: AVM is small. It’s also on the right side of the brain which means it cannot be responsible for the right-side of my body. The left side of the brain is responsible for the right side of the body. So even though it’s there – it’s small and not the reason I’m having these problems. The pinched nerve could be responsible for some things BUT it’s also on the wrong side of my neck.

She said that doctors always think that test findings are worse than the reality. Because it’s out of their scope of practice the smallest things look urgent and scary to them. She said it would be the same as if she saw someone who had something non-neurological happening. She would be more anxious about it because that’s not her scope of medicine. She doesn’t like the way the ER wrote up their findings as it’s overwhelming to tell a patient they may need radiation or neurosurgery when they’re not qualified to make those judgments.

Neurologist’s Exam

Onset of Symptoms in Haiti: headache, dizziness, uncontrollable arm and leg movements, 52 blood glucose level, speech difficulty.

Symptom still present: There is still right-sided weakness, dizziness, severe headache, and mild speech delay

DIAGNOSIS:

She told me most diagnoses in her field are based off of ruling other things out. The AVM/Abnormal Blood Vessel is not important right now. It cannot be related to these symptoms. She believes that at this point in time there is no need to do a follow-up MRI or Cerebral Angiogram because the abnormal blood vessel is not that large and she believes it’s benign. YEAH!!!!!

Pinched Nerve – The MRI shows that and taking muscle relaxers is a good thing BUT it’s not responsible for all of my symptoms.

Her thoughts were a TIA (mini-stroke) seizure, or complicated migraines. However – I don’t have any risks for it being a seizure and it doesn’t fit the typical seizures that they see.

So that leaves TIA/complicated migraines. They both basically give the same symptoms that I’ve experienced. Doing more follow-up tests to figure out exactly which one it is will result in lots of money which we don’t have and no difference in real follow-up treatment.

So they want to treat the symptoms and see where it goes. I still have these horrible headaches and my head is sore to touch. The headaches are causing a lot of the dizziness and she said that the headache could even be causing the right-sided weakness and speech delay. She said even the low glucose level that I had in Haiti could have caused the extreme tremors and dizziness.

Because TIA and migraines can so closely resemble each other we may not know until I have another episode. She believes that the episode in Haiti was more than likely brought on by stress. She believes that once we treat the headache regardless of why I have it – that the speech, dizziness, and tremors will all return to normal.

I’ve been prescribed 4 different medications including steroids and was told to REST and avoid STRESS! I told her I thought I had the rest thing down and she said – -yes, but it’s important on the medication she’s prescribing that I really don’t STRESS – don’t over-think (HA) – don’t drive – don’t do any heavy lifting – and try to truly relax. The back of my neck is still really tense and so even for the muscle relaxers to work – I need to chill-out!

I told her now that I know I don’t have to have brain surgery – it will be a lot easier to relax! 🙂 She apologized to me again for that!

I just wanted to say Thank you to Monica Reich who spent the last three days trying to call every connection she had here in Lexington. Through her efforts, she had arranged for the new MRI and angiogram to be done for free! She even met me at the neurologist’s appointment today to tell me the great news. I think she was hoping I would need one 🙂 No – I know she wasn’t. But I am so grateful for all her work and I can’t say that I’m sad I didn’t need one! God answers prayers and I’m so happy to not have to worry about that anymore.

Thank you all for your countless emails, comments, and prayers. While the symptoms are still here – it’s so encouraging to know that the worst is over and I’m sure as I start the new medication that these symptoms will just go away or get better.

Jose told me he was afraid something would happen to me and he would be left alone. I reminded him with 5 kids he would never be alone 🙂 I also reminded him that we have more family than any person could ever need!

You will never understand what your prayers and encouragement have done for my family.

WHATEVER I SAY IT WON’T BE ENOUGH BUT……

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

It’s about 1:30am and I can’t sleep. I went to bed around 8pm and woke up with a huge headache about an hour ago. I told Jose that my head hasn’t hurt that bad since I had Gabriel. I had an epidural that went up instead of down and gave me the worst headache ever. So I had natural childbirth since the epidural didn’t work and the worst headache on top of it. Then it hit me….today is Gabriel’s birthday.

I had this elaborate birthday party planned for him. It was going to be a baseball party in Haiti. I thought since this same July group spent so much time praying for me during the delivery – that this year we could have a huge celebration that Gabriel and I both made it.

I had a baseball pinata, gifts for 8 of Gabriel’s little friends, a baseball music cd, baseball pan to make a baseball cake, a mets uniform for him to wear to the party and cheerleading outfits for the girls to wear, plastic baseball hats for all of the kids, and tons of decorations and balloons.

Now I know that Gabriel doesn’t know that today is his birthday. For that matter – I barely remembered myself. My mom told me that my sister called today asking if she should do anything and they both agreed not to remind me since Gabriel isn’t even with me but in Columbus, OH.

Gabriel not being with me on his birthday was much like last year. After he was born, he was swept away to the NICU and I didn’t get to see him for the rest of the night. I didn’t get to hold him for over a week. I, myself, spent days in the hospital. So how strange that a year later – I’m finding myself back in and out of the hospital, I can’t see Gabriel, two of my nannies called and said that they’re getting up at 4am and going to the morning church service to pray for me just like they prayed last year, and I have this same group in Haiti praying for me again.

I’m finding myself a little misty-eyed so I think I’ll wrap this up. I just wanted to wish my little boy a Happy Birthday and let him know that I love him and that I didn’t forget this special day.

Gabriel at 1 month old:

Gabriel at 1 year old:

Today was not as productive as I would have liked. The Neurologist we were going to see is out of town this week. I was supposed to see his partner but his partner never knew so there was no appointment for the neurologist today. It’s scheduled for Wednesday at 1:30pm.

I did have my follow-up appointment with a doctor here in Versailles. My mom made me an appointment and the doctor we saw is actually the doctor who was on the school board and voted for me to graduate high school in 3 years so I could start nursing school. So that was kind of interesting! Just another one of those things where you know God is in control.

He did an evaluation and said that my right side is still significantly weaker than the left side. His interpretation of the MRI was different than the ER doctor’s interpretation. He thinks that there is enough evidence that  I had a stroke which is very different than what I was told at first. Either way – neither doctor is really qualified to make the final judgment. So we’ll really know more on Wednesday when the neurologist looks at the actual MRI film. Both doctors though still recommended the cerebral angiogram.

In the meantime – my head still really hurts. It’s sore even to the touch.  I’ve been prescribed some stronger pain pills but when I take them I’m pretty much knocked out for the day. At least they can’t complain I’m not resting enough. It seems like I’ve rested most of the weekend.

I had told my doctor that if I had extra pills left over I would just take them to Haiti and he snapped at me and said “You better not be going anywhere until we have this figured out”. I assured him I wasn’t going anywhere I was just “saying” that these would be great for the pharmacy!

Well it will be quiet on my end until Wednesday afternoon when I see the neurologist – Dr. Blake. Thanks so much for your prayers, emails, and comments. I’ve been extremely nervous – probably will be until I know what’s really going on. I’m thankful though that I do have so many people who care and love my family. You’ll never know how much that means to all of us.

My ER doctor just called me now and was so glad he got a hold of me and that I hadn’t headed back to Haiti. This was the first ER doctor I talked to who’s in Lindsay Nation’s church. He told me that they missed something on the MRI and the radiologist just called him.

They said that I have an abnormal blood vessel in my brain. They’re calling it an AVM which is a tangle of blood vessels in the brain that bypasses normal brain tissue and directly diverts blood from the arteries and veins. They said it could have been there since birth but normally those things are never detected until I have an episode like I did this past week.

He was very calm on the phone but has truly frightened me. He said I need another MRI and then they’re going to do a cerebral angiogram which is a test that has you insert a catheter into the artery of your leg and and they go through your neck and inject dye and take pictures of all the blood vessels in the brain. WHAT??? Yeah – that’s what I said.

Has anyone heard of this or gone through this or knows someone who has this? I’m posting the article I read right after the doctor called so I could be more informed – but I have to admit that I’ve been teary-eyed all morning now. Please pray that this is nothing. Surely this is nothing…..

AVM ARTICLE

We left for the states (what feels like a week ago) but was really just Thursday. We flew stand-by to Miami and landed around 9pm. My arm shook most of the trip and my head was pounding. The kids were good though. We got to the hotel around 10:30 and was planning on leaving at 4am to catch our 6am flight to Dallas and then onto Lexington. We were told late that night that we wouldn’t make that flight because it was over-sold. Instead we were going to go on a non-stop to Louisville which left around 11am. That actually was pretty fine for us. We were so tired having landed so late and we were able to get a good nights sleep.

So we flew to Louisville and landed around 2pm. Gabriel cried nearly all morning. I have to admit that God sure knew what He was doing when He gave me Jose. I was in so much pain and so out of it – Jose basically was stuck with 4 kids and me – which is a lot for even Superman. Jose did it with such patience and love. I’m so lucky.

We drove from Louisville and got to my parent’s home around 3:30. My sister was waiting for me and my parents and Jose took me onto the ER at Saint Joseph Hospital. As soon as I came into the ER I saw at least 30 people there infront of me. I just knew we would be there all night. In fact, while I was checking in a lady came up to the desk and said she’d been there for 2 hours and everyone else seems to be going ahead of her. The nurse explained that they see people based off severity and so the worst were seen first.

I gave my mom one of those – “Oh Great, we’re going to be waiting here all night” looks and then got nervous when they took me back as soon as I signed in. I was given my own room and had a nurse hooking me up to machines within about 10 minutes of arriving.

All my doctors and nurses were Christians. When I told them I came from Haiti they asked me if I knew Lindsay Nation (an intern with our mission). He is a doctor in her father’s church. My nurse asked me if I knew a few people from Southland who sure enough had gone to Haiti with us. It was God reminding me that He was here. How random to have so many people with a Haiti connection in the ER or was it?

I was hooked up to an EKG machine so they could monitor my heart. I had bradycardia and a few irregular beats. I have to say the most painful part of the whole experience was them trying to get blood work and hook me up to an IV. Now that everyone knew I was a missionary to Haiti……. it made it impossible to curse when they began to stick me! I am not exaggerating…..the first lady stuck me 4 times and never got a vein. She called for another tech who stuck me 2 times – – nothing. They sent for “specialists” who came in and stuck me 4 times. I was crying. My arms are all blue and bruised from their sticks. Their final stick was a small vein in my wrist which they told me would be painful. I couldn’t hold back the tears when they stuck me there. I mean I’m still sore.

After they took the blood work and gave me IV’s, they sent me immediately back for an MRI. Now I have to tell you that I’ve seen those done with both Rosie, Gigi, and Malaya. But they were so small they fit right through the tunnel of that machine with no problem. I thought there was no way I was going to fit in that machine and I was just sure I was going to be clausterphobic.

The machine is really noisy. The tech told me to close my eyes and try to keep them closed just so I wouldn’t have anxiety in the machine. I was in there for 45 minutes. The random thing was – it was actually an okay experience. The machine has so many noises and random beats that I was able to sing songs in my head to match their beats. I started off with Power In The Blood as the sounds just beeped so fast. I got through two choruses of Blessed Be Your Name and a new song I learned with the last group – I am a Temple. After that I fell asleep. They took me out of the machine and injected some dye and then put me back in for another 15 minutes.

It took about 90 minutes before we got back the results. My blood work looked okay to our surprise. My right side is still weaker than the left side and my head still pounded and I was dizzy. They were sure that I was going to show that I had a mini-stroke. The doctor was even preparing me for that. So we were all anxious when he came in with the results.

I’ve attached a picture below of the spinal cord. He told me that the MRI showed that I had arthritis along my neck and I have a herniated disc between the C2-C3 vertebre. This is basically the bones that connect right to your skull – high in the neck. It’s pinching nerves that run from the brain down. It’s making me dizzy, making the right-side of my body weaker, and giving me the horrible head-ache. It’s mimicking the effects of a stroke but it is NOT a stroke. There is no evidence of anything like that in my MRI. They said that I do have some swelling in my Pituitary Gland but they didn’t see any tumors or anything to explain that so they weren’t too concerned about it right now.

So the good news/bad news. The good news is – there isn’t anything really happening in my brain to cause these problems. The bad news is – he told me that this won’t really go away. He said years from now I”ll have to have surgery. This can be aggravated by stress. He asked me if I had any stress? I just smiled.

So the prescription: REST AND REDUCED STRESS!!! HA! He gave me some great pain pills too 🙂 He also gave me muscle relaxers and I have follow-up appointments with a therapist and neurologist on Monday. My symptoms aren’t any better yet. My headache is only controlled by the pills and relaxers. But without them – the pain is pretty bad. My arm still shakes and it’s difficult to do much with my right hand.

In Haiti my glucose levels (sugar) never raised above 59. We normally like for the levels to be from 80-100. We thought those levels might have been the reason for the dizziness and shakiness. Well when they took my levels here it was 73. So an answer to prayer for sure.

We applied for government aid so we’ll see what happens with the bills. My sister took Malaya and Gabriel today to Columbus. My brother, Bud, took Mikayla and Rosie to Lebanon, KY. We left Gigi in Haiti because her passport is in the process of being renewed. So my parents’ house is quiet….perfect for resting.

Thank you for your emails and your prayers. I’ve had a lot of strange things happen with my health, but this by far was one of the scariest. I think my pills are kicking in….time to lay down for a while. Love you all so much and thank you for making us feel apart of your family!

It’s with a heavy heart that I ask for a special prayer request for my family. On Sunday, my health took a turn that scared me and everyone else. Randomly, my arm started shaking. No matter what we tried to do to stop it – it wouldn’t stop. I was very dizzy and became a little confused. My sugar was in the 50’s, my heart rate was in the 50’s and my blood pressure was high. I was helped over to the house and put on IV’s and my arm continued to shake along with my leg. For 12 hours my arm shook even though I slept. It continues to shake from time to time. I’ve had some chest pain off and on now for a few days and my head is still pounding. Despite eating and doing our best to keep the sugar level up – I cannot seem to raise my level.

After talking to a few of my medical friends and doctors in the states – they’ve advised me to leave right away. We’re not sure if it’s a neurological problem. My strength is not the same on my right side as my left side. My speech is somewhat slowed – it takes me a while to get out what I want to say. 

My entire family is heading to the states tomorrow. Please keep us in your prayers. I feel very guilty for leaving when we have a large group arriving in Haiti this weekend. However – I can’t ignore my body – especially since it’s doing such weird things. We plan to go to the ER in Kentucky. We don’t have insurance but hopefully we’re poor enough that we can get some government aid. I’m told I’ll need a CAT scan, MRI, and EKG. Those things alone make me very nervous and even as I type my hand is beginning to shake again. 

So please keep us in your prayers along with those still in Haiti. This is a large group and while I know they are perfectly fine without me – I absolutely hate it that I can’t be here. So please pray that I’ll have peace, that we’ll have safe travels (we’re flying stand-by the whole way), that we’ll be able to get govt. aid for all these tests, and that whatever it is – that it’s got a simple fix.

I just wanted to share with you some of our phenomenal worship we’ve been experiencing each night here with Curt. I hope that this opens up your heart the same way it opened up mine. This group has just been such a blessing. After our worship, we went to the church and shared about the church’s history and its victory over satan. We had another praise and worship service followed by quiet prayer/reflecting time. It was a beautiful ending to a beautiful night.