Swimming Against The Current

Its been almost a month since my surgery. That morning started with a splitting headache before I even got to the hospital. I think part of it was because the surgery was late in the day and I couldn't eat the whole day before or that morning. We brought Max to my parents house and headed to Boston. My surgery was scheduled for 3:30 and we got there a little after one. I checked in, got lab work and before I knew it I was changing into my gown and fancy slipper socks. I asked for some IV tylenol which helped the headache a bit then the surgeon came in and they told me to shut my DBS off even after we told them it had a surgery mode. So, I shut it off then off I went into the OR. I remember moving onto the operating table and what seemed like seconds later they were pulling a breathing tube out of my throat. They woke me up too soon so I felt it being pulled out. yikes. The next thing I remember is being in recovery and telling the nurse my nose hurt. She was working on getting me ...

A few months ago I was feeling pretty lousy and every day I was noticing new symptoms. I was so exhausted I could barely drive and staying up to watch a show or play a game with Jim was impossible. My eyes started giving me problems and I was getting dizzy quite frequently. When I tried to read, all the words in a paragraph bunched up into one big blur. I was overweight but couldn't find the motivation to even walk to my mailbox to try to lose some weight. It was the worst I ever felt and it was causing me to be miserable and not be the mother and wife I needed or wanted to be. I had an appointment scheduled for a physical so I decided to talk to my doctor. She told me that fatigue can be caused from so many things and she would do some blood work but she suspected it was just from having a baby and getting muscle spasms from my dystonia. I knew it was more than that but figured I would just wait and see what the blood work showed. Not long after my appointment I started gettin...

It's 430 in the morning and i wake up to Max's whimper over the baby monitor. I get up to go get him and the first thing I notice is that I cant open the door. My left hand is so weak I cant turn the door knob. I try with my right hand even though I have no feeling in it. As the door opens my forearm goes into spasm and causes excrutiating pain. i've had quite a few problems with my arms and hands over the years, but this is the worst it's been. The Botox wasn't working so we tried a new medication called xeomin and my left hand seems to be opening a bit, but it's completely useless because it's so weak. I can't do anything with it. My right arm has been affected by the dystonia, but also I have carpal tunnel so the two of those together also makes doing anything very difficult. Hopefully a DBS adjustment will help soon. After Max was born, I was diagnosed with a pituitary macro prolactinoma. I didn't know what it was at first, but then found ou...