It’s My Vision!
What started out as a pretty ordinary day ended in a two night hospital stay. I came home from work on Tuesday April 27 and told my husband that I was having a lot of pressure (not pain) above my right eye. Having had a bad headache the day before I thought that maybe I was going to get another one so I told my husband that I was going to lay down. My husband left for his class at 6:00 and said goodbye to me before leaving. I woke up at 7:30 pm and I was seeing double. Of course I thought it was because I just woke up and I just needed to give it a few minutes to adjust. After several minutes it still didn’t clear up and when I looked in the mirror I noticed that my right pupil was very large and my left was normal. I also realized that I could see normally with each eye individually but not together. With my daughters assistance I called the eye doctor which of course was closed. We called a friend who was a nurse and she said that I should go to urgent care. When we called urgent care they gave me a number for an on-call nurse. I spoke to one person who then handed me directly to an RN who proceeded to ask me many questions. After she decided that I didn’t need to call 911 she told me that I needed to go the emergency room. I kept telling her that I felt silly because I was having no pain or discomfort aside from my vision not being clear. She was insistant that I needed to go to the emergency room.
Upon arriving in the ER I was assessed by a triage nurse and was taken back with a level 4 status (whatever that means) immediately instead of being sent back to the waiting room. An ER nurse came and asked me questions and checked my vision and told me that the doctor would be in shortly. The doctor came in and once again asked me the same questions I had been asked mutliple times that evening. The doctor decided that they would have blood drawn and order a CAT SCAN. She also spoke to a nerologist who ordered a lumbar puncture. The ER doctor’s bedside manner had much to be desired when she came back in and told me she thought that it was Multiple Sclerosis and that I was going to need a lumbar puncture. She was so matter of fact about the whole thing and now I was completely upset whereas up to this point I was calm and joking about things. There must have been an angel on my shoulder that night because to my relief the neurologist cancelled the lumbar puncture. The cumulative decision made was to give me an MRI which I couldn’t get that night so they said that I would be admitted and I would have the MRI in the morning. They ordered morphine and Tylenol with Codeine as well as me being placed on a heart monitor. I kept thinking they were going to the extreme because after all I came in for double vision not pain or anything to do with my heart.
I was taken to my room about 2:15 am and didn’t sleep at all because I was sharing a room with someone who moaned and groaned a lot. At 6:30 am they came and took four more vials of blood and at 7:30 I was taken down for my MRI. I didn’t see a doctor after leaving the ER until 3:00 pm. I thought he was the neurologist but it turned out that he was a cardiologist. I told him that I thought it was odd that they were monitoring my heart, had me on a liquid diet and ordered pain medication that I didn’t need or want. Although I never was given any medication I found it strange that it was ordered from the get go. He explained to me how everything in your body is related and they need to check everything in order to rule things out. He told me at this point that my MRI came back fine as well as my blood work and the MRI ruled out MS. He also told me that if it were up to him that he would let me go home but the neurologist is the one that admitted me and the neurologist is the one that had to release me.
Around 7:00 pm the neurologist came to see me and told me that everything came back fine on my MRI and blood work. When he examined my eyes he said there was a subtle difference in the optic nerves and he wanted me to have another MRI that looked specifically at my optic nerves. Of course being that it was late he told me that I would need to stay another night in the hospital.
The next morning I found out that the neurologist forgot to order the MRI so I didn’t get that done until lunch time. It was around 5:00 pm when I was getting yet another test with electrodes attached to my head that the neurologist came in and looked at the results of the electrode test. He said that everything on the 2nd MRI came back clear also as well as the test that I had just taken. He really didn’t have an explanation as to what happened to my vision but he said that it could have been a migrain even though the symptom lasted far longer than it should have for a migrain. Finally the doctor said that I could go home after they drew more blood. I was more than ready to leave and so 8 vials of blood later and removal of my IV tube I got to go home. I do have follow up visits with both the cardiologist and the neurologist and I have to go see a retinal specialist. I’m fine and grateful to be out of the hospital.
Like I said from the beginning “It’s my vision”!