What Now?

Thankfully, I am doing much better this week. After taking a diuretic on Saturday and Sunday, most of my symptoms slowly resolved. My head pain is only moderate when it comes and it is only around my left eye, and is relieved with Excedrin. The noises in my ears have completely resolved and everything in my house is back to sounding like it is running appropriately instead of running to my heartbeat. I can sleep without pain without any percocet.

My only residual symptoms are some slight nausea at times and diplopia (double-vision). I can see a few feet in front of my face just fine (so I have no trouble working) but anything I look at across the room goes into double vision after just a few seconds of looking at it. This makes driving extremely difficult. In fact, I haven't dared drive outside of the neighborhood all week.

Mom very kindly gave me a ride to the neurologist today, where I came home with no more answers than I went with.

He doesn't think I had what I thought I had, because he doesn't see any papilledema; however, he can see how I came to that conclusion, because I did have all the symptoms. I had every symptom, but he discounted them as being anything and hardly acknowledged anything I said about them.

He doesn't have a clue what to think about my headaches, because they should have been better with standing, worse with lying, and there should be no difference between sitting and standing. Mine was better with sitting, head splitting on standing and lying down. He just passed it off as a headache that I happened to have for over a week, with no relation to the residual double-vision that I am left with. I KNOW that was no tension headache. What I had was the worst pain I have had in my life that only morphine took away. I am not one to even think of going to a doctor for most pain, haven't been to one in 12 years, so things have to be pretty darn bad for me to go to Instacare or the emergency room.

I also know that I did not have double-vision before the headaches and didn't even notice it at all until the day I drove to the emergency room, when it was only if I looked left and has progressed since then to being all the time. It just seems pretty evident to me that whatever caused the headaches had to have caused the eye problem.

He also had no explanation as to why my symptoms started resolving as soon as I took diuretics, but discounted that as having anything to do with it, but I'm convinced that is what resolved the headaches and hearing issues, and besides I lost 8 pounds in two days!! (That's a lot of water buildup that came from somewhere, might as well have been some in my brain.)

Since all my symptoms have resolved except my diplopia, he mostly concentrated on that, and he thinks I have a cranial nerve 6 palsy from untreated hypertension. Trouble is, I have never had high blood pressure. When I went to Instacare it was 155/97 , which I assume was due to the severe pain I was under. In January when my company sent a person to my house to check my labs it was 126/78, and 124/88 the year before that, and has never been higher than 130 that I have ever been told. I don't think I could have had high enough blood pressure for long enough to have caused this and he couldn't really say so either based on my history, but had no other explanation.

He said it should resolve on its own, but he didn't know how long, and suggested maybe I go to an ophthalmologist, who looks at more eyes then he does....and then said, "I would like you to come back in 4 weeks." For What?????

I liked this doctor okay as a person. He was actually having a lot of fun looking at my eyes with his new ophthalmoscope that views in 3D, and since I was so good at focusing, he kept asking if he could look at my eyes again, and then would exclaim, "this is soooo cool!" It may have been cool, but since he didn't know why I had the problem or any plan to fix it, I certainly do not see any reason to go back.

I came home and googled 6th nerve palsy and learned that it can take up to 6 months to resolve and it just says to wear a patch on one eye when driving, which is what the doctor had also said. I have perfect vision with each eye independently.

I can't find anything about it to explain why I may have gotten it since none of the causes fit my situtation.

When this is all said and done, it will probably have cost me $3000 or more, and since no one has done anything for me, except me, it is all money spent for nothing. Unfortunately the $1000.00 I had built up in my insurance plan was wiped out pretty fast, and I won't have any more money in there until January, and then only $500.00. With a 6,000 dollar deductible, I will be paying for anything else I decide to do about this situation.

I really don't know if it is worth it to go to an ophthalmologist just to have him tell me to wait it out.

How does a person deal with double vision for 6 months? I guess, I may have to find out.