Aneurism

It has been difficult to post the past week, because Mr. Pill- Popper has been home sick. I believe he went into work a day and a half last week, and then spent the rest here at home.  On the half day, he called me to come get him, and then yelled at me when it took me an hour to get there. I told him I had gotten sick and thrown up, and had to get cleaned up before coming to get him, to which he finally apologized.

He started this new job two weeks ago, and it seems as if he has spent half of it absent. After considering it, he decided nerves were to blame for most of his illness.

Now, granted, he does have a tough job. He spends his day with the most difficult kids in three counties, who have all been sent to his school after getting kicked out of their own. But, he seems to enjoy his work.

He says the kids are a lot like he was when he was there age, and it gives him an advantage for working with them. I think the job helps him keep his head out of his ass, because it gives him someone else to focus on rather than just himself.

With the sickness has been an ongoing headache. While he is a frequent emergency room visitor (he knows most of the nurses in each ER, as well as most of the regular doctors), Mr. Pill-Popper made five trips to area ERs in seven days, with varying success. He at least tries to rotate between ERs, so they don't give him such a hard time.

Some doctors will give him a full workup, while others will just ask him what he usually takes to get him in and out.  Going to all of these different places takes time and money, and he can't always get medicine for the efforts.

Since his headache still hasn't gone away, Mr. Pill Popper first decided he wanted to go to the ER again. After thinking of it again, he decided that he didn't want to put in the time, and instead scrounged together whatever change we had here and used it to buy a pint (?) of vodka. 

Halfway through the pint, he was feeling no pain, and was in pretty good spirits. Ahh, if he could only stick with this half-pint measurement, I wouldn't be so concerned about his drinking. But no, after I mentioned that I thought he was in a good place with the drinking, he decided that I couldn't possibly be right, and proceeded to down the rest of the bottle.

Of course, that made Mr. Pill-Popper into the belligerent drunk rather than the relaxed, obnoxious drunk that is tolerable. He also decided his headache came back, and we needed to go to the ER anyway.

We had a nice case of freezing rain around this time, followed by a good dusting of snow. This made travel precarious, but okay if you weren't in too much of a hurry. Mr. Pill Popper was, of course, in a hurry, and would bark at me to speed up. He also said he should've drove (because, obviously, the accident he had a year ago due to a case of drunk and slippery didn't teach him anything). He fell asleep and was snoring soundly by the time we got there.

I entertained the idea of going home, but my past experience has taught me that he will eventually wake up, and he will make us get out and go again.

The doctor he saw tonight was one of those full workup kind of guys. Obviously, he must've been a new doc. He did the basic neural tests, plus a CT scan. Since Mr. Pill Popper had an aneurism around 8 years ago, he does have an area in his brain where an old aneurism has healed. It's the same site where his migraines continue to be.

While most docs don't ever see anything abnormal on the scan, this one apparently noticed some inflammation at the site of Mr. Pill Popper's old aneurism site. He still pumped him up with meds (this time 3 mg of dilauded instead of two, which sent Mr. Pill Popper into a short "chemical induced coma" , according to the nurses), and sent us home. 

This new information, though, worries me.