Updates and Kittens

Kittens!

Okay, so that’s kind of an aside, but let’s touch on the fun stuff first.

About a month ago Zed got a call from one of his contractors saying that a very small kitten had wandered into a bank downtown and was orphaned. After repeated attempts on facebook to locate the owner we took him to the vet – who confirmed that he had clearly been on his own for WEEKS.  After numerous antibiotics, ear and eye drops, and a lot of wet food to chunk him up, Spencer is now a very happy member of the Zee family.

Meet Spencer – yes, he is as adorable as he seems 😛

Tee hee. What a cutie pie.

Onto other not so fun things.. an MRI revealed that my neck has decided to stage a mutiny, and as such is crap. In Canada, the current wait time to see an orthopedic surgeon is 12-24 months – yeehaw.

In the mean time, my amazing saint family doctor sent me for  steroid epidural shots to try to tame the wild beast that is my cervical spine. Unfortunately things went sideways.

Like, very sideways.

Whenever you hear someone that has an 8 inch needle dug into your spine say “oops”, and then receive blinding and excruciating pain – it’s never a good sign… in my case, he punctured my cervical dural (the layer of stuff surrounding your spinal cord) and spinal fluid was leaking into my skull and wreaking all kinds of havoc.

So then this happened.

Unfortunately because of where the puncture was in my spinal cord, both a neuro-anesthetist  and neurologist could not do the traditional ‘blood patch’ treatment due to the high risk of complications :(. After a weekend in the hospital surrounded by various specialists, I’m left with the world’s worst hangover headache (called a post dermal puncture headache specifically) which lasts anywhere from 1-6 months, depending on how fast and how efficiently my spinal cord repairs the leak. The headache is a result of an increase in intracranial pressure from the spinal fluid traipsing around my noggin’ to broadway tunes, and having the time of it’s life. I’m pretty sure it’s because my brain is so largely awesome – the neurologist disagreed, but I think deep down she knows I am right.

So that’s not super fun.

Amidst all this, poor Zed never left my side – sleeping in hospital chairs, listening to the think tank’s brainstorm possible treatments, and hearing all of the very terrifying risks….

Throughout all of these reindeer games, is my mom going in for a spinal fusion. I signed myself out of the hospital 6 hours before we had to take her to the hospital for her surgery. Sigh. It was a very long week.

Next post will be an update on my teeth.

Hope everyone is having a good week – and don’t forget to look around you and see the good and the amazing things in everyday life. Sometimes those can be everything that matter.

-Emm