(Originally posted in Facebook on February 7, 2019)
After the incident at Christmas with M and the electric candles in the window, I knew we needed to get him to a doctor’s office. But where do you start? Of course, you can’t take yourself to a neurologist’s office – even if you know that’s where you need to be. You have to start with your family doctor or general practitioner and let them refer you. After many dollars have been spent and tests have been run, of course. So that’s what we did.
Each appointment started with the doctor asking why he was there. I went to each appointment to make sure they were getting the complete picture of what was going on. When we told them he was there because we were concerned about memory issues and confusion, each and every doctor said “But you’re too young to have those issues.”
Well, thank you for saying that, but that’s why we’re here. And he had test after test. Blood work, CT scan, MRI . . . everything came back negative.
When he was finally referred to a neurologist’s office, it was probably March or April. By that time, he had also started having severe migraine headaches that had been keeping him out of work for days at a time. I’ve had migraines for 25+ years, but I can count on one hand the number of days of work I’ve missed because of them. Sumatriptan helps me enough that I can continue working. But it wasn’t helping him.
The neurologist gave him a verbal exam during the visit. He gave M three words to remember: ball, yellow, shout. He told M to remember those three words and that after a few minutes he would ask him to tell him those three words again. Then he asked M a series of questions: what is today’s date, what city is this, where did you grow up, who is the President of the United States, how many quarters are there in $3.50, can you count backwards from 100 by 7?
He could answer the questions until he got to the one about the quarters – then he turned to me, as he does when he doesn’t know the answer. I could tell he wanted me to supply it for him, but I just sat there and tried to look encouragingly at him. He also couldn’t count backwards. Then came the time for the three words. He couldn’t come up with those, either.
Again, the neurologist told him that he’s much too young to have these cognitive problems (gee, thanks!) and that he wanted to continue with a series of tests with his colleagues in the practice to get to the bottom of what’s going on. The doctor didn’t seem to be concerned about the headaches M had been having or the amount of work he was missing.
When we got to the car, I could tell M was shaken by the experience and by the questions the doctor had asked. When I squeezed his hand, his eyes filled a bit . . . I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I do remember us talking about the fact that we were going to be together for the long haul – that we had said “for better or worse” and we meant it. And whatever it takes to get through this, we’re going to do it together.