This is Lumbar Puncture!

If you didn’t notice, and judging by the lack of messages on my answering machine when I got home yesterday, you didn’t, I’ve been lying low at U of M hospital since midday Tuesday. I went to the ER with a massive headache that started early Monday afternoon and hadn’t dissipated at all through the rest of that day and was still prevalent Tuesday morning. I was thinking that is was dealing with a condition that people with SCI get called autonomic dysreflexia, which is a way the body reacts when there is a problem going on below the site of a person’s injury that the person can’t detect because of the injury. Usually, things like sores or ingrown toenails or even something as simple as needing to go to the bathroom will trigger autonomic dysreflexia; and how a person knows they are experiencing it will be headache or elevated blood pressure or even just feeling very flushed.

So, I went into the ER explaining that I had this headache and when I told the doctors that I had just recently returned from Portugal after having my surgery, that’s when things got a little more complicated. I was subjected to the usual testing: vital signs, blood draws, urine samples. The doctors were concerned about a possible infection relating to the surgery, so they wanted to get a lumbar puncture, a procedure I wasn’t thrilled about undergoing. One of the diamond-in-the-rough benefits of a SCI, though, is the overall lack of sensation when experiencing certain medical treatments. Because the spinal tap is performed so low on the back I really couldn’t feel a thing, which I’m assuming is a real plus with that procedure. The results of the spinal tap did show a high white blood cell count in my spinal fluid, so I was admitted overnight to get an MRI and I ended up staying through until Thursday afternoon. I’m being treated for bacterial meningitis, even though none of the cultures came back positive. I guess I have several of the symptoms, but no real evidence of having meningitis.

I’m home now, needing to be hooked up to two different IV antibiotics every twelve hours, which is always a blast. Since I started on the IVs, my headache has gone away and I do feel better, so hopefully this doesn’t set me back any farther.