It seems the medication the nurse (not a PA or doctor) prescribed for Somara wasn’t enough. There was some slight, brief progress after Tuesday evening but a huge regression happened yesterday. I don’t know how severe it is until I get her to a specialist or at least a full-fledged doctor tomorrow morning. I’m not blaming the nurse from last week. She did the best she possibly could based upon the data available, etc. Medicine doesn’t always get it right on the first attempt unlike Star Trek and medical dramas. However, I thought the free-market was supposed to solve the issues of expertise/availability as per the Right-Wing Noise Machine. Obviously, it’s not true since most doctors in America are Nine-to-Fivers like everybody else. No wait, I’m using anecdotal experience as evidence as the many critics of Canada’s system like to use, never mind the statistics and facts contrary to those claims.
Personally, I prefer the Bismarck model so I don’t know why my opponents always point to our northern neighbor.
Either way, we’re hoping for a better, more hopeful diagnosis because the steroids didn’t work (or they’re perceived as failing) and if it doesn’t clear up soon, I will be the exclusive driver of our new car (and probably the old one too), which our friend Juliana will be overseeing the final details on!
Mar. 16, 2010 Update: The doctor had nothing useful to report. Immediate results from the blood test reported everything as normal. Somara received some stronger motion-sickness medication (dramamine on steroids?) and we’re off to a specialist in two weeks. Meanwhile, I had the honor and thrill to drive her pickup truck on its final commute today. I did alright, I gradually got the hang of taking it out into first gear without grinding it too much by the time we arrived at Apple. I hope her medication kicks in by the time we go to the Honda dealership tonight. I feel Somara should give the ol’ S-10 its final drive.
Hey, buddy. It took nearly a year for me to go from initial visit with my family doctor, to a hearing specialist, to a more focused inner-ear specialist, to a facility where they spun me in a chair in a dark cylinder to watch my eyes track, to another facility for an MRI, to a heart specialist, and to a brain specialist, before they could finally lock down a diagnosis of damaged inner ears together with slight seizure activity on the left side of the brain. But once the diagnosis was done, physical therapy dealt with the balance loss (I still ride a motorbike!) and meds took care of the brain fuzziness.
My guess is Somara’s path to diagnosis will be much shorter, but these things do take time. In the meantime, good wishes are perpetually winging your way.
Cheers,
Les