I will admit as you get older you are more in tune to your body if something is not quite right, and maybe because I now mark that middle age box, mortality is a little closer than it was 15 years ago. I think in our technology age we also tend to google our symptoms to try to self diagnose our ailment. This is never a good idea because what may be a simple case of indigestion by the time you are done browsing the web you are certain you need a triple bypass and are moments from certain death.
This is where I share an experience on Wednesday that I was certain God had decided to put me out of my stressful misery and google was going to give me my final diagnosis moments before my death so that the coroner would not have to do an autopsy.
Wednesday was a long day with a long list of activities to get done. At our church I had a mother/daughter activity that needed my full attention. So I headed over to the church in the afternoon to set up and get the room decorated. We were pretty much done and all of sudden I was getting a weird distortion in my sight in my left eye......
It was as though I was looking through a crystal prism in the upper left hand corner of my eye. It was small but distracting and out of the norm. I sat down, blinked my eyes a few times, and it would not go away after a few minutes.
I excused myself from our decorating and drove home...the distortion was getting increasingly bigger....my anxiety level was reaching a threshold point.
I walked in the house and immediately laid down on my left side. I have been under a lot of stress so maybe it was my blood pressure, laying down on your left side will help bring down your pressure. I was running through 50 possible explanations in my head...but ....all I could think was....STROKE!!!!
I was in a full on panic attack at that point. The distortion was growing larger and it was not going away.
Adrian came in the room asked what was wrong, I explained what was going on and said, "I need to go to the hospital, something is not right."....then I stopped, and in all my medical wisdom said, " GOOGLE IT! I am having a STROKE! SEE if this is a symptom of a STROKE!"
So I followed Adrian downstairs, laid down on the floor, still on my left side, because I am positive my panic attack has sent my blood pressure through the roof, and I was going through all the self tests for signs of a stroke. I am yelling out my symptoms and Adrian is search engining his wife's possible demise.
... and amidst all this panic the five year old was laying down beside me whispering in my ear, "Can I have a fruit snack?"
This is it! This is going to be my last few minutes on earth...lying on my basement floor, my husband googling my possible stroke, and the five year old wanting fruit snacks.
...and then...google came up with my diagnosis...the diagnosis the coroner would use for his paperwork.
OCULAR HEADACHE...a precursor to a migraine....sometimes a migraine may happen, sometimes not...it lasts for 5 to 20 minutes and it will go away.
...about that time it went away and I did not have a migraine...
...I was not having a stroke.
I laid there...let my panic attack subside....and then we looked at each other..and started to laugh....
...what else do you do at that point...
I laid on the floor while we searched engined a diagnosis for my possible death... and the five year old was more concerned about me getting one last snack for her....
There it is...my obituary in a nutshell....
Wednesday, November 16, 2011, over stressed wife and mother found dead lying on her left side on basement floor. According to Google it may or may not have been a stroke.
Five year old asks you send fruit snacks in lieu of flowers.
I had a similar brush with death once, and my biggest concern was that I hadn't told my hair stylist that I would like her to do my hair when I died! We've moved since then, and I have a new hair stylist. And I just told her straight and up front... if you're going to be my hair stylist while I'm alive, then you have to do my hair when I die, too. She was okay with that, and we have a great on-going client-hairstylist relationship!
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