After a year and 3 months worth of more doctors’ appointments than I have ever had in all my life and feeling like I’ve been a slave to my headaches, I’m feeling like I finally got my “mojo” back. I have been in the restaurant business since I was 16 and have owned my own restaurant since 2003.  After my TGA, I took a week off of work; which was the longest time I’ve ever been off work. When I came back, I was not able to multi-task like I used to be able to do. I just couldn’t function as easily and just felt as though I were in a “fog”. If you know anything about being a chef at a restaurant, you know a major part of the job is multi-tasking and how important it is to have that “mojo”. The other day I noticed myself moving better and I was functioning easier; which lead me to wanting to share my story.

 

My TGA happened on April 18th, 2017. I went to bed the night of the 17th with nothing out of the ordinary. I woke up around 3:00 am on the 18th and the last thing that I remembered was the chill I had in the lower half of my body. I came to on the same day at noon sitting in a hospital bed with my wife and daughter sitting in the chairs beside it. I asked my wife why we were there and why I was sitting in a hospital bed. She answered, very patiently, telling me how that was the 10th time she had to tell me that we were there because I was acting very strange and that before she took me anywhere, I went up to her 7 times asking the same question and that I didn’t seem with it at all. My wife, Carol, told me the rest of the story of how we got there. She told me about how concerned she was with my behavior and how she wanted to take me to the ER but that I told her to take me to my family doctor instead. From there, my family doctor told Carol to take me directly to the hospital- he even wanted to call an ambulance for me. Test after test was taken at the hospital and all of my results came back extremely positive. After I had my EEG test done, the doctor told me that I was the 4th person that she’s dealt with that had a TGA. I was kept overnight at the hospital and the day after, I started to remember some of the conversations I had with the doctors. I was told to keep a log of how I was feeling and what I was feeling each day after I went home. Lingering, dull headaches were very common as well as just feeling a bit out of sorts. Things just seemed fuzzy and foggy at times. Another big symptom that I had was emotion- I got very emotional. For the first week after and every so often after that, it was very difficult and rough to put my thoughts together. It was very frustrating and made me very flustered at times. Along with the lingering dull headaches, I kept having migraines as well. Before my TGA, I only remember having 2 migraines in my entire life. I’ve never been a big drinker and through all of this, I only ever had a few drinks but, every time that I did drink, I got a headache. I went to a baseball game on May 31st and I drank half of a beer and got a headache. This is when I decided to quit drinking because alcohol just seemed to make everything worse.

 

A few months before my TGA took place, I was scheduled to have a surgery performed on my neck. The discs between my C5 and C7 are herniated, I have degenerative arthritis, and spinal stenosis. My theory for my problems in my neck goes all the way back to when I was 12 and I was in a sledding accident and almost broke my neck. I had all of the tests that needed to be performed before a surgery is done and they all came back extremely positive. I was scheduled to have my surgery on December 19th but, I decided not to have the surgery done a few weeks before that date. I decided I wanted to work through it the way that I handled all of my other problems- working out. I had a personal trainer and I worked out (and still work out) twice a week. This was so I could strengthen it however, I couldn’t and still can’t get it pain-free. The pain comes and goes and it’s just a matter of time that can go by until I have to get the surgery done.

 

This time after my TGA has been a rollercoaster ride full of trial and error. Before my TGA, I was a frequent blood donor and my blood pressure was always consistently 120/75 no matter what. After my TGA, my blood pressure was 140/90 and I also had those frequent headaches that I’ve talked about a few times before that were almost a constant issue after my TGA. My doctor told me that he didn’t think my blood pressure had anything to do with my headaches. My doctor put me on amitriptyline along with sumatriptan in June of 2017 and those crazy headaches and unusual blood pressure persisted until June of 2018. After a year of that not working, my doctor decided to put me on beta-blockers in May of 2018. It took about a month to start working, but my blood pressure is finally back to normal and I’ve been feeling great. Along with that, ever since I was put on those beta-blockers, I haven’t had a headache since. Another thing that I found that helped me are the trigger point injections in my neck that helped to relieve some pain and pressure.

 

I’ve been on here reading other stories trying to put together some common denominators and one that I have noticed in most stories is working out- a lot of the stories have included working out in them at least once. Ever since my TGA, I’ve just been looking for answers- that’s why I’m just looking for common denominators trying to make sense out of it all. Something that my one Doctor (Dr. Tom) told me that helped me understand was a pebble hitting the pond analogy and maybe it could help all of you too. Imagine a calm and undisturbed pond. It’s calm until a pebble is thrown into it and creates ripples that then work its way all throughout the pond and then eventually, the pond returns back to its undisturbed state. Compared to a TGA, the “pebble” is the electrical disturbance that creates the miscommunication between the 2 lobes. The “ripples” represent the loss of memory and as long as the ripples are going, you can’t remember anything until the ripples settle. In my search of answers, I thought of everything that could’ve lead to my TGA. Another thing that I thought of was that I have Factor Leiden 5 which is a gene mutation which makes whoever has it more apt to blood clotting. I’ve known that I’ve had this ever since 2000 and I also know that 10% of people have it and just don’t know it. To help with this and to prevent anything bad from happening with clotting, I take a daily aspirin to thin my blood. When I asked the doctor if this could have anything to do with it he said that it could be a possibility.