“What month is it?” my sister asked me as she lay in bed, me standing beside her in my bathrobe.
I looked around the room. It was dark. I felt cold.
“Um…February?” I guessed, it being a few days before my birthday in JULY.
“Here we go,” she muttered, throwing back her blankets.
I had kept asking her where my husband was. He had been training in another state for weeks. I had called him a few minutes previous. Twice. I never call him at work. He called back and I hadn’t answered.
Fortunately for me, my husband is an EMT and my sister is a nurse. She had also taken care or our mother who had frontal temporal dementia. This was not her first foray into neurological misfires.
A blood sugar test was taken, because of course we had that in the house. I remember her doing it and staying on the phone with my husband. She drove me to the ER. I remember the drive but not talking to my husband during it. She gave constant pop quizzes. I flunked.
I asked her constantly if she called my work. She had. Then if the dogs were ok. They were. Those two concerns were my max capacity.
The day had started normally – I had walked one set of dogs, came back home and walked the other set. It was a lovely warm morning, and I took videos of them romping. Got home, took a shower. I remember getting out of the shower. I remember sitting on the edge of my bed in my robe. Then I was asking my sister questions while she lay in bed. It was like an aperture opening and closing, sometimes opening completely, other times just barely.
But it didn’t hurt. Well, it didn’t hurt me. My sister is the one that was most affected in those moments.
We spent about five hours in the ER, I got scanned and blood drawn. A doctor came in to explain things. I remember him but not his words. My sister was like a photojournalist that took notes.
I was home by the afternoon, and I felt a little foggy but otherwise fine. My sister herded me like one of my cattle dogs and kept me penned on the sofa while we watched movies.
For the next week I thought I could feel gray fingers try to stroke my brain, but I pushed them away. Could have been a coping mechanism, but for sure there were times I felt dazed.
You know what the treatment plan is for this, you guys? Giving me reassurance. That’s not reassuring. I saw my doc, she entered it into the log, and filled out paperwork so that my husband can’t travel for work for more than 2 weeks.
Per Mayo Clinic, there’s a low probability that it will ever happen again. Per Reddit, this could happen all the time.
It’s like I experienced a slice of my mom’s dementia. And you know what? It wasn’t bad for me. It was like I was wrapped in cotton and all I could perceive was if I was comfortable or not. It was scary, but to have the aperture twist open and I see my sister’s face was so reassuring.
It’s been almost a year and I haven’t had another so fingers crossed, kids.
freckled crab 