A rude awakening

Today started out like any other. The cats woke me up around 5:00 and I let them out. At around 6:00, they were scratching on the door to come back in. I got up, went to the door, reached for the door handle…and the next thing I knew I was sitting on the floor holding my head saying, “Ow, ow, ow!”

The door to the patio was open and the cats were inside; they were looking pretty scared. John came rushing out of the bedroom to see what was going on. I guess I passed out. My head and tailbone were both sore from hitting the floor.

John helped me off the floor and got me to the couch. But I couldn’t go back to sleep because I was too freaked out.

I’m pretty sure the fainting spell was caused by getting up too quickly. My blood pressure runs low anyway, and I sometimes get dizzy when I get up too fast.

I had two appointments in Orlando today. The first one was with the pain management specialist. I’m in more pain now than I was in last time I saw him because I just had another surgery last week. But all in all, I feel like my pain’s being pretty well controlled. He wrote me some new prescriptions (same as what I’ve been taking) and said I should come back in two months.

I let the pain management specialist know about the fainting incident since the pain meds could have been a contributor. He asked me some questions then told me to make sure I let my oncologist know about it.

My next appointment was with the ENT. She’s in the same office as the oncologist, so I left a message about my incident this morning. The oncologist decided to see me while I was waiting on the ENT. She asked me some questions and did a quick exam. Although she agreed with me that I probably passed out from getting up too fast, she thought I should have a CT scan of my head (to make sure I didn’t have a concussion) and an x-ray of my pelvis to see if my tailbone is broken. She wrote orders for both and told me to go have the tests done after seeing the ENT.

The ENT was running two hours behind (which is pretty much the norm for her). When I finally got to see her, she said as long as I keep eating she thinks it’s okay to wait two months before my next surgery. If I feel like my esophagus is starting to close before that, I need to call her office. After the long wait, I spent about five minutes with the ENT, then John stayed to make my next surgery appointment (July 15) and I went to registration to see about my imaging studies.

My name got called pretty quickly, then I found out I had to actually go through the whole registration process again (I just did it last week) before they could do the tests. It took about 30 minutes. Once that was done, the CT scan and the x-ray only took about 15 minutes total.

After that, I went back to the oncologist’s office to get the results. After about a 30 minute wait, I found out my CT scan was normal. They’re going to call me with the results of the x-ray. If my tailbone is broken, there’s nothing they can do about it anyway.

We left the house at 8:15 this morning and didn’t get back until 5:30 tonight, so it’s been a long day.

In other news, I have to get an insurance physical every year, so I had that done a few weeks ago. My PCP wrote me an order for my yearly mammogram, so I went to have that done last week. Last Friday, I got a call saying there was an abnormality on my scan. It’s been there for about three years, but for some reason they’ve decided to take a closer look at it this year. I’m having a diagnostic mammogram and an ultrasound on Friday. I should get the results the same day.

I’m trying not to worry about that for now. I think I’ve got enough on my plate.