C7

Yesterday, Thursday March 24th, was simply not a good day. I woke up early in the morning and I didn’t feel quite right. I quickly noticed that the back of my head felt slightly numb, and that I had very little sensation in the fingertip of my right middle finger. I ran my hand through my hair and my fingers felt strange, like they had just been shot with Novocain. And my head, why was it all tingly? Then I remembered that my head got that weird numb feeling the day before in the middle of drama class, but it soon went away or I had stopped noticing it.

If I had slept wrong during the night, it wouldn’t make sense if my head to feel like it did the previous day. Right? Anyway, I had to get dressed and get ready for school, so I threw on my clothes and off I went to my service bus to Isikkent.

I had a lesson with my 2nd graders for the 1st two hours of the day and unfortunately I had a tough time getting through it. My finger was still numb, my head was tingly, and I was feeling very tired all of a sudden. I was lost in my head, distracted, and I was lucky to make it all the way through the lesson without incident.

I told some of the other English teachers how I was feeling and they suggested I go to the hospital to see a doctor. The ER? I thought that was a little rash- why don’t I wait a day to see if it goes away first? They insisted that I go, and one of the Turkish English teachers, Mine, came along with me so she could interpret for me at the hospital.

Once we got there, a doctor examined me and ordered an MRI of my brain, another of my neck and upper-back, and an EMG test on my arm and hand (I had no idea what an EMG was at the time, but I sure found out soon enough).

Mine had lessons to teach back at the school, so she was driven back to Isikkent and I was left there alone for a while. I waited in the waiting room for a long time after that. I started feeling really tired and eventually nodded off. A nurse woke me up sometime later and motioned that it was time for my first MRI. As I was walking downstairs, the school’s interpreter and translator, Sanem, arrived to help me out.

After that first MRI, we were told I had to go to another hospital in Izmir for the EMG. We hopped in the car and got there about a half hour later. We waited another 45 minutes or so at that hospital before they brought me in for this EMG test. The nurse had me lie down on a table and they started attaching some electrodes to my hands and arms. All of a sudden, I felt this intense, horrible electric shock in my arm. My body jumped clear off the table and I let out a yelp. The technician administering the test laughed and told Sanem that she forgot to tell me that would happen. Yeah, real funny stuff, doc.

She continued with the EMG, sending about 10-15 more shocks into my arm, and these were STRONG shocks. It felt like I was sticking a fork into an electric socket. Even on the last one, I was still yelling and my body was jumping in reaction to the pain. I noticed I had started sweating liberally, and I felt damp all over.

The nurse put the shocking tools away and I thought, “Finally, it’s over!” Boy, was I wrong. The nurse proceeded to pull out a long three-inch needle and hooked it up to the EMG machine. I asked Sanem what was going on- nobody had explained to me what the technician was going to do. The nurse told Sanem that they weren’t going to inject anything into my arm, but that they did have to stick the needle into the muscles in my arm and hand a number of times. Oh god, I thought. And suddenly I could feel beads of sweat forming on my forehead. Right before the first needle prick, the nurse told me with a smile that I wouldn’t have come here for the test if I knew how much it would hurt. I didn’t find her pithy attempt at humor amusing at this point.

They stuck the needle into my bicep, tricep, forearm, and a couple times into my hand in different spots. It really, really hurt. Looking online later, someone said an EMG is like giving birth without an epidural. I wouldn't go that far, but it gives you an idea. I grimaced and let out baritone screams into the wall next to my gurney. Every time she put the needle into my muscle, I had to flex my muscles or somehow push against her arm so they could get a reading. It was awful. I went there expecting a few passive, monitoring electrodes attached to my arm and instead I got shock treatment and long needles.

I got out of there as soon as possible, and when we arrived back to the first hospital, they informed me that I needed another MRI test. I asked them why they simply didn’t do both when I was there the first time, and they told me they wanted to break it up so I didn’t have to lie still for an interminable length of time in that thin MRI tube.

After the second MRI was over and the results sheet was handed over to us, it was nearly 4:30 in the afternoon. We went upstairs to the doctor so he could tell me if anything is seriously wrong. I was hoping he’d just say the tests came back fine and that I’d be back to normal in a day or two, but that was not the case.

Instead, I found out that the C7 (c stands for cervical) bone of my spine (the 7th bone down from the top of my spine) is somehow misaligned. It's jutting into my spinal cord and that’s what’s causing the numbness in my head and hands. I think I started to turn white at this point. So what do I have to do to fix this? Will I wake up tomorrow with my entire hand numb?

The doctor told me to go see a neurosurgeon next week (great!) and that I’d start some form of physical therapy then. If that doesn’t help, surgery would be my next option. I think ALL the color had dropped out of my cheeks at that point. Then the doctor started talking about how there’s a slight chance I might have multiple sclerosis and that later on they might have to take a spinal tap from me. Someone needs to tell this doctor to work on his bedside manner (even though, technically, I was sitting in a chair in front of his desk). Those were the last two things I wanted to hear right then.

Even with my insurance from working at Isikkent, the hospital visit set me back $200. I guess that's better than it would be back home, where I have no insurance whatsoever. Seriously, I cannot afford to get sick or have something like this happen right now. And to have something like this develop while I'm over here in Turkey, halfway across the world from my family, it's certainly not optimal conditions.

Sanem and the driver, Ismael, took me back to school, where I made it just in time to catch the service bus back home at 5 o’clock. Jen, Maddy, and I were invited over to someone’s house for dinner tonight. I had been looking forward to it all week, but I had to pass- I was just too exhausted (physically and mentally) and in too foul a mood to go to a dinner party. And I was angry. Angry that yet another malady in some way caused by or related to my leg imbalance problems has appeared out of nowhere. All last fall it was the plantar fasciitis in my left foot- when that started in September I could barely take a step without feeling pain in my left arch. That was 7 months ago and I still have to wear special shoes and I can’t jog because it would re-aggravate it all over again.

And now I have a vertebrae bone nudging into my spinal cord? Cut me some slack and give me a frickin’ break here! I read online tonight that these pinched nerves cause, along with numbness in the hands and arms, a fair amount of pain and discomfort. No sharp pangs or pain felt so far, but if that happens to surface in the next few days, I’m gonna be one angry, frustrated, and unhappy fellow.