I might have had a seizure on Monday night. I have an appointment with Dr. DogLover tomorrow, though I'm not sure what that's going to accomplish. The Hub is comming with me, since he's the one who knows what happened. I don't remember a thing. All I know is that I woke up and felt like I'd been hit by a train.

If I had a job to go to there was no way I'd have made it. It was very discouraging.

I was sitting there, finally having gotten myself out of bed at 11:30....

berating myself for being lazy when I hazily remembered The Hub reminding me to get some money orders for him before he left for work, "You were having some kind of bad dream, flailing all over the bed, it took me forever to wake you up." he said.

When he came home I asked him again what had happened. He said that he was sleeping next to me and he woke up because I was thrashing around, both my arms and legs. He said this might have gone on for about 30 seconds, and that there was a period during which I was unresponsive. He said that after awhile I spoke to him but I said things that didn't, strictly speaking, make any sense.

This is different from the times when I don't make any sense in that I don't remember any of this.
Fabulous.

A positive thing that happened is that I spoke to someone at Unim Provident, which is my company's short term disability insurer. He said that he would extend my benefits through the end of May, since I still have more testing to undergo, that he didn't feel it would be helpful to obtain my medical records at this point, since they'd say that I was about to undergo more tests. The office of UP I'm talking to is in Columbia South Carolina, so the people there are unfailingly polite. It's enough to make me want to move there.

The guy I was talking to was very sharp and it was easy for him to understand that it is beginning to appear that I don't have one big problem....I have more than one problem, and I guess it's hard to tell how big they are.

For instance, it appears I may have done something I almost never do: leapt to a conclusion. When the MRI of my brain and spine came back showing no lesions associated with MS, I assumed I didn't have it. I forgot that MS and other demyelinating disorders are still often diagnosis of exclusion. That is, that it can be diagnosed if the person has the brain lesions or changes to the cerebral spinal fluid that are associated with the illness - these are clear "slam dunk" diagnoses. But, they call it the art of medicine because there are many cases where a person has a demyelinating disease without all or any of the "for sure" signs.

In fact, Dr. DogLover wrote "Demyelinating Disease" as the primary diagnosis on my disability form. He would not, of course, do that unless he thought that was probable.

Nobody wants to tell someone that they have an incurable disease, especially if it turns out not to be true. The last time I saw him, I asked Dr. DogLover to tell me, straight up, if he thought I had MS (because I don't have Lyme disease - the most common demyelinating disease in this area) He said that it was too early to tell for sure, that a computerized eye test I'm scheduled to have next week would be helpful in determining the problem. If that's unclear then I'll need to have a spinal tap. So please pray for me that the eye test shows something!!

I don't know, exactly, why I haven't written about it on the blog til now. I've known for two weeks. I guess I have this strange superstition that writing something down can make it more real. In fact, nothing is certain. It's just that I'm not out of that particular woods yet.

I could have a demyelinating disease, a type of epilepsy, and a bulging disk all at once.
Well, no matter what I have, I'm pretty sure I can find something funny about it....just maybe not today.