Friday, March 6th

What was to start out as a normal day has ended up being the day that will burn a hole into my memory for the rest of my life. It started out simple enough with being awakened at 6:15am by a toddler who had scaled her crib for the first time and was now standing at my head asking "momma I want juice". Half asleep I did get up and get juice and then turned on whatever cartoons I could find.

I decided today instead of rushing off to work as I usually do I would take it easy and sleep in for a little while. I woke up at 9:30am and immediately came out to the living room. To my surprise there seemed to be extra furnishings. Everything in the room appeared to have a twin. I can tell you you that if you have ever experienced a sudden change in your vision you might know what I am talking about. But after having 34 years of better than perfect vision, this was enough to send me into a panic attack.

After speaking to my husband (the optimist) I decided that my first course of action would be to get into see my optometrist to rule out any eye problems. After this turned up clean I was then advised to continue my journey to the Emergency room for an evaluation.

After spending a very long time at the SLER I was then taken to have a CT scan. Now I had one about 15 years ago for some sinus trouble and little did I know that they now take about 5 minutes to complete as compared to the 30 plus minutes before. As always I was expecting a "we found nothing" and to go home for some much needed rest. The course of events from this point on still haunt me and I expect at any moment to wake up from this awful night-mare.

When the CT tech sat in her little room and spoke on the phone first before coming to get me I had a feeling that I was not going to be sent home without a clue to what was going on. She very quickly asked me to sign a consent for contrast and then mentioned something about follow up MRI. At this point even though my years of working in the medical field prepared me I still could not help but blurting out "what the heck did you find". She was very pleasant and reminded me that the MD would have to disclose that. I guess I started feeling sure panic at this time and asked to be brought back to my room.

Acoustic Neuroma is what they are calling this grape sized alien that I have in my head that his causing me so much havoc at this time. I can't tell you that no matter how many times someone tells you that it is usually benign and that they can do surgery to fix it that you are just ultimately horrified that you have a TUMOR in your head.