Back in the ER
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The Steinhaus Family
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The Steinhaus Family
We’re back in the emergency department at NYU. Earlier this morning, Andrew was on his phone and laptop when he started noticing new neurological symptoms, including headache and confusion. He realized he could read and process individual letters but was having a hard time understanding what words they spelled. We were getting ready for his cardiology appointment but decided to head to the ED instead.
They did a CT scan as soon as we arrived, which fortunately did not show a brain bleed, and we’ve been waiting for a MRI for several hours. The neurologist attending suspects we’ll see evidence of another small stroke and may need to adjust his blood thinner dosage.
We’re told it’s not unheard of to wait 10 hours in the ED for an MRI, so we don’t expect to leave anytime soon. About 5 hours in, we overheard that the man we’d been separated from by only a thin curtain has COVID. They moved us to another bed quickly after we asked. Now we can add not getting COVID to the long list of things that need to happen to avoid pushing chemo back from starting at the end of next week.
Relatedly, I am worried about the downstream effects of missing today’s cardiology appointment—a pre-requisite to getting the echo next week. Andrew’s oncologist said he’d call the cardiologist to let him know we needed to reschedule. We also ran into a cardiologist at the ER who we knew from Andrew’s inpatient stay, and he said he’d message the doctor too.
Andrew is generally in good spirits and practicing reading and writing. The deficits may be improving already, which is a great sign. But it's tough to feel like this is a rollercoaster we can't get off. Every time we think we're gaining ground, something else knocks us off course.
Elyse Steinhaus
over 1 year ago
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