I had one of the scariest experiences in my life on Sunday.
At about 3pm I was sat on my bed with my laptop watching Netflix like I usually do and all of a sudden it felt like the left side of my skull was being crushed. In seconds I reached a 9 out of 10 of the pain scale - I practically screamed. Then after about 10 seconds it died down to about a 5/10, so I went to get up to tell my mum what happened but almost as soon as I stood up I lost consciousness and hit the floor. I should note - I have Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome so losing consciousness isn’t exactly a new thing for me. While lying on the floor where I’d fallen, my mum witnessed me passing out six times in five minutes, and for the entire time my head pain went between 5 and 9 out of 10. And the entire of my face and the right side of my body started to go numb.
Naturally, my mum was pretty scared. She called 999. The first responder paramedic that showed up just looked at me, pulled a face and said; “Have you ever heard of a migraine?” I couldn’t believe it. I told him REPEATEDLY that I have migraines all the time and that they were never as painful as the pain in my head at that time, nor did they ever come on that suddenly.
An ambulance arrived shortly after and they took me to the hospital. The doctor came to see me quickly and said I needed a CT scan of my head immediately because he thought I’d had a subarachnoid bleed - a bleed in my brain. The CT scan came back as completely normal but he said that about 5% of the time the scanner can’t get a view of the bleed. He also told me that my white blood cell count and my inflammatory markers were through the roof! I’d been experiencing right sided flank pain for a few days beforehand but I’d ignored it - I get pain all over my body sometimes so I figured it was nothing... Anyway, I was put on a strong dose of Gentamicin.
By Monday morning most of the right side of my body was feeling normal and my fever had dropped down too. The pain in my head had subsided - down to about a 3 or a 4. The doctors said that they wanted to keep me in for another day so I could receive more antibiotics.
And finally today, the pain in my head is completely gone. They’ve sent me home with ten days worth of antibiotics to clear the infection out of my kidneys. They said that the infection in my kidney had triggered a Hemiplegic Migraine. Which is apparently a very nasty and very painful migraine that tends to mimic a stroke with one sided weakness or numbness, slurring of speech, altered vision and extreme fatigue.
I was terrified. What do you do for this kind of migraine to make it less severe or go away?
Thank you all in advance. I just never want this to happen again...
#chronicillnesswarrior #POTS #EDS #BPD #NAFLD #InterstitialCystitis #Diabetes #Migraines #Pain #help #Kidneyinfection #HospitalStays
Latest
14 reactions •
3 comments
