Let’s Talk of ER Rooms, MRIs and Little Bags

Although I wish I didn’t have to….

Steph here, stepping in for Andrei as he’s fighting a bit of a battle just now. See, today we discovered via an emergency MRI that he’s had a stroke.

But let’s go back to last Wednesday, post the fantastic CHAIR-ity Auction Event on Sunday, to the tanking of his white blood cells and the rising of his temp. At about 4pm his temp was 99.9 by our crappy no-good-low-battery frustrating-as-all-get-out thermometers. By 8:30-9pm when Andrei moved from the couch to the bed, it was 102. At 100.5 he’s supposed to go to the hospital, so we packed it in and all three of us, Andrei, Juliana, and I, called the doc’s PA (he was on vacation) and headed to the ER. Being neutrapenic, they gave him his own room, but consequently made him wait around for 6.5 hours until he got a bed up in D-quad on the 10th floor. I’d had to take Juliana home since she had camp in the morning and it was already 12:30am. I felt terrible leaving him.

Fast forward through the next two days of Andrei feeling crappy—nauseous and wicked headache and general discomboobilation—to today when I called this morning and he couldn’t even carry on a conversation on the phone. He said he’d call me back then he didn’t. When I called him back, he forgot he was talking to me and dropped the phone. I knew something was up, so I woke up the kiddo (she was back with us for the weekend) and we dashed over here to the hospital.

When we arrived, Andrei was a bit slow, slurry, and disoriented, but just seemed tired, urpy, and a bit spaced out. It was after we left to go do a few errands that things got weird. J and I were at the Safeway sandwich counter when I got a call that they were taking Andrei down for an emergency MRI. He’d had a little accident and they were concerned.

We grabbed the sandwiches and took off, first to drop off J at her mom’s house, second to get me back to the hospital ASAP. When I arrived, my peeps had just arrived as well—the brotherman, sister-in-law Lynette, and nephew Krister—and we raced up to see where the A-man was. He’d just left for the MRI, so we went back downstairs to diagnostic imaging where I found Andrei already in the MRI. Earl, the technician, was very cool and showed me the inside of Andrei’s head. Things looked pretty normal, but then I’m not exactly trained in the art of reading MRIs. It wasn’t until later that a doc stopped in to tell us that the MRI had revealed a stroke.

We don’t know anything more at this point. Only that a stroke was apparent on the MRI, it was “new,” and they have no idea what caused it. Dr. Vitality Zak (wow what an awesome name) is on the case, so hopefully we will know more soon. In the meantime, Andrei is in and out of sleep, and I’m here. Just here. Not leaving. No way.

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