Passing the Test

I guess I passed all the tests. I responded as told: I grabbed the good looking male nurse’s fingers as hard as I could. I gave him a big ole smile, closed my eyes and raised my arms up to him. He checked everything off his list and passed me on to the next person. I recognized her as the daughter of a former co-worker. She smiled and chatted about her dad as she slapped stickers and wires on my legs, arms and chest. I guess I had talked too much during my first test, so I had to have another before she pronounced it good enough and wheeled away to have it graded.Before I could think too much about those tests, another couple of guys arrived with more test fixings. Each took an arm and began attaching stuff onto me. Resistance was not an option. They wanted me to be still. The guy on the left wrapped a white restraint around my arm. The guy on the right wanted my arm straight so he could shove that plastic thing into the curve of my arm. Even all that was not enough. A sweet young thing asked me to lie down and “smile pretty, we are going to take a picture.” Okay, so maybe they didn’t say, “Smile,” but they did want me to be still and warned “you may feel something warm inside you.” The warmth spread up and down across my torso. Then it went away. Sometime in there they took some kind of pictures without a flash that I could see. Then the oddest photographer stuffed me in a tube that sounded like an outer space hearing test. I giggled as the machine groaned and squeaked in a variety of decibels.After my mid-morning array of tests in the Emergency Room at South Arkansas Regional Hospital, I give the staff working there high marks for a stellar performance. From the moment I reported symptoms that might require immediate attention, each quickly tested me. As Hubby said, after watching the clerk come to me to sign papers, “They got you in here without going through the admission office?!”Yes, very fast.Of course, it helped that my symptoms came as I talked on the phone with my daughter. She immediately recognized a potential problem and did what she could. When I described my concerning symptoms to my nurse neighbor. I followed her advice, “You better get it checked out. This is Friday.”As she said that, Hubby returned from a brief trip to town and drove me to get help. After I took the tests, I spoke with the hospital ER doctor. He assured me that all the tests demonstrated that I did not need a remedial course of action. Then he gave me one more test. “Cover your eyes one at a time look at my eye and tell me how many fingers.” Easy peasy, kindergarten stuff, I thought as he moved his hand around.“You’d be surprised how many have trouble with this,” he said. He said that the symptoms may have been a more intense ocular migraine than I usually experience. Or it might have been a small TIA. He assured me it was a good idea to be checked. And added that if I have been accustomed to the symptoms of more intense ocular migraines I might not have been as concerned. The symptoms can be similar yet less intense.A painless ocular migraine can happen at any age. I have dealt with the sparkly zig zags of lights across my vision sporadically through the years. They disrupt my vision for a few minutes and then go away. If you ask me, the most annoying pain was repeatedly hearing, “If you had been in your twenties we would not worry about it, but at your age, you need to be checked.” OR “We have a 74 year old with symptoms of a stroke.” I find it incredible that I am really that old.One good thing about it all was that the staff and facilities at SARH passed muster in every way I could imagine: bedside manners, response time and explanations. Good job folks. Well done. Keep it up.