Wow! Wow! Wow! UW Headache Clinic, PFO

Just as I was feeling the East Coast doctors had all given up on me, (I was actually on the other line with sweet cheerful Chris at Dr. Ponti's inquiring about my porphyria test results)my cell phone rang and there was a 206 Seattle number calling so I grabbed it and it was Alisa at the UW Headache Clinic in Seattle and she spoke to me in this beautiful fluent medical language that honestly sounded like singing. Like song.

Now by now it must be obvious that I will take hope wherever I can get it.

But please take me seriously when I say My God, This was so Wonderful. I got off the phone jumping for joy and feeling like I had won an award!

Her first question was why hadn't I been diagnosed with migraine with aura? And I said, I have no idea because I have been having aura since 2008 and it can be so severe and yet when I look at the codes all of the doctors are using it is always headache and migraine, not migraine with aura etc.

And she said yes, I can't figure it out because when I read your charts I see speech impediments and visual distortions and those are aura.

And she let me speak and explain my difficulties and to say that it has been a very hard time since 2007/2008. How the migraines were three days at a time in 2007 and then 2008 became monstrous. They stretched out until there were no spaces in between them.

She asked me if i knew about....and she said this beautiful long sound, and i said no though then when she began to explain I did know what she was talking about but I just let her explain because her description was beautiful about the heart and the brain and fetal development and the lungs and the purification of the blood and so forth...

PFO. Patent Foramen Ovale. Yes I had heard about it and a couple of years ago, Spring 2009 when my heart turned into a washing machine I wondered about it as I did research into what could be making my chest gurgle and slosh and vibrate out of rhythm and try to break loose from its moorings in my chest. But then an echocardiogram, a 24 hour holter monitor, and an ultrasound of my heart showed nothing.

But now I learn that for this test for PFO they would have to inject saline into my veins, which I had not have done of course.

So, she says that in half of patients with migraine with aura they have PFO.

But she says no one does the surgery as treatment for migraine.
And it is only for research that you can have it done and only after you have tried three prophylactics and failed.

And I explained that while Topomax had been recommended for me before, starting 2009, I had not used it as I was too sick with other health complaints and tests and trying to get other pains under control to work on that.

She asked if I was using the hydrocodone and I said No, I had started Amerge and that was helping and that beyond that I just had so many different types of weird head pain and something changed radically and for the worse in September 2010.

She heard me. She talked about tests they can do. She said they would see me. The front desk would call me.

And I feel like Wow. Thank you. Thank you.

And that I have, since Nov 2008, felt that there was a major circulatory aspect to the illness.
And now I am thinking maybe the antibiotic is helping me this week because it cleans the blood a bit?

I have no idea. I just know that this past week I have felt better, between the Amerge, the antibiotic, and the ibuprofen.

The future is looking brighter, in a nice non glaring, pleasantly shady way.

Science, Science, I love Science.