Photo Corners headlinesarchivemikepasini.com
A S C R A P B O O K O F S O L U T I O N S F O R T H E P H O T O G R A P H E R
Enhancing the enjoyment of taking pictures with news that matters, features that entertain and images that delight. Published frequently.
Mr. Head
22 August 2024
We spent the night in the Emergency Room having our head examined. And imaged, first with a CT scan and then, when that only raised questions, with an MRI.
Mr. Head. That was the filename for our MRI scan. The bleed iså the bright object at the top of the brain.
After dinner on Aug. 12, we had just finished washing dishes when, apparently, we decided to give ourselves a concussion by banging our head on either the granite counter or the tile floor.
We don't remember.
But the headaches and double-vision caused by the concussion were a constant reminder that we weren't doing very well. We've managed to continue publishing here but it's been difficult to get through a word without multiple typos. We've even given dictation a run but it takes some skill to do that well, we've learned.
So yesterday we email our doctor to explain what happened and how we've been doing and ask if there's anything that would speed recovery.
She called us with concern. You need a brain scan, she said. Now. If a friend can't take you, call an ambulance.
A friend picked us up an hour later and dropped us off at the ER, parked and spent the night with us there.
We got right in but then the tests began. Blood, a physical exam for a stroke, heart monitoring, a chest X-ray, an EKG. Then off to the CT scan.
That showed a puzzling density at the top of our brain that would need an MRI to clarify. So the ER doctor wanted to admit us for that test today.
Except we do wound care for Joyce on Thursdays and because her home nurse has jury duty, we swapped Friday for Saturday with her. So we were the only "nurse" for Joyce the next two days.
The doctor was appreciative of the situation and got us an MRI before the unit closed at midnight.
Then it was a matter of getting the MRI interpreted.
There was a mass at the top of the brain that might be a benign tumor. It wasn't there two years ago when we had a scan of our sinuses so it was a particularly fast growing one that would require surgery.
Our friend had, twenty years ago, had just such a brain tumor successfully operated on. As we waited for the MRI analysis, he relived those days.
As it turned out, the doctor released us at 2:45 a.m. when the full analysis determined the mass was no solid but liquid, likely blood that has been leaked by the impact and would be reabsorbed in the coming days.
No tumor, no surgery. Go home.
We're not out of the woods, though. We've been instructed to return to the ER for admittance to the hospital for a series of tests to determine what's causing the double vision, monitor our heart and the brain bleed.
We'll be unable to work from the hospital so Photo Corners will not be published six days a week while we are hospitalized.