Ugh, it's happened AGAIN! My health took a turn for the worst and I ended up in ICU in need of some really urgent medical help. I found the help I needed in the form of a cardiologist at the John C. Lincoln Trauma and Surgical Center. I'll go way back to the beginning and kinda explain where my health has been hovering for several months now.

Toward the end of last October, I was diagnosed with a seizure disorder. Not epilepsy, exactly... Just just some kind of strange thing going on inside my brain that was causing me to have seizures. It got pretty bad for awhile, up to 6 or 8 fairly intense seizures happening every day. I had a few tests done, we couldn't find an exact reason (or fix) for the problem, so a neurologist put me on anti-seizure medication and I went about my life. And for a couple weeks, everything seemed to be going well. Then the seizures would re-appear and my life would turn hard to manage again.

Several times this happened, each time I would switch medications or maybe just be given a new medication in addition to the other stuff I was. I started to feel really sad, because I felt like I would have to take meds every single day for the rest of my life and I so didn't want that. But if it's what I needed to do in order to live a mostly normal life, I was willing to accept it and move on.

A couple weeks ago, my seizures returned. Again, my medication was switched and tweaked and things started to look up again... For maybe about a day. It had become a horrible problem again (for myself and for my friends, who couldn't help but be worried and scared when it happened) so Shaggy brought me to the Emergency Room last week. I had a seizure right there in the ER, while I was being monitored and an EKG being performed. I don't remember much about all of that, to be honest. But I've since be filled in on the details. Anyway, on the EKG, they found a problem with my heart. It was pretty nasty, and the cardiologist the ER doc consulted thought it might even be what's been causing my seizures.

I was admitted and more tests were performed. (They did an EEG too, the pic below with all the weird stuff on my head... That was during that test.) I had many seizures and had a lot of other serious things going on, so I was downgraded to the ICU. I had constant monitoring and it was awful there. I don't remember a lot of real big details, the whole thing kinda passed by in a blur. But I was scared. Then the cardiologist everyone assured me was looking at my charts, grafts, blood tests, etc. came in to meet me personally. And he put a lot of my fears to rest.

In short, he told me my brain wasn't getting enough oxygen. When your brain isn't breathing enough O2, it kinda shorts itself out and you can have a seizure, pass out, all the other stuff that was happening to me. He told me he was very, very sure the trouble was with my heart and he showed me why. Basically, the top portion and bottom portion of my heart weren't communicating correctly. They would get out of time, the top compartments would start beating quite fast and the bottom of my heart would not respond. There would be periods of time, sometimes as long as 5-6 seconds, where half of my heart wasn't beating at all.

Obviously, that's a big problem. So I started to get way nervous, until he told me he thought for sure he could fix it with a pacemaker/defibrillator device. That sounded bad too, but he explained it was minimally invasive and lots of people (typically not at age 35) have pacemakers. Best of all, he thought I'd be able to come off all the seizure drugs and life a healthy, normal life. Once I recovered from it all, of course.

So that's what happened. The surgery was done early the next day and I've been recovering ever since. I haven't had one seizure in almost a week. And I haven't taken any seizure drugs in all that time too! So far, so good. :-)

I'm healing up now. He used surgical glue instead of stitches when he put me back together, and he did a really good job. The scar should be really thin and neat. I'm sore, of course. I can't use my left arm very much. But I've typed all this out, so I'd have to say I'm healing up quite nicely.

Here's hoping this puts all that behind me. And here's to getting back on track updating my site! Fortunately, I shot a small cache of material right before this happened, so I've still got current stuff I can update with. Whew! If you have any questions or comments about my pacemaker, the whole hospital thing, or anything else... Email Me!

Here are some pics of me throughout my scary hospital ordeal. They were shot on several cameras in different rooms, lighting conditions, etc. And over about 4 days time, except that last shot which I shot just minutes ago. :-)