Chapter 23

Chapter 23
August 2009


I guess I’ll write and let you know whats been going on lately and it’s a doozy!

Friday the 7th I had to go to the ER in Victorville, CA for extreme dizziness and almost passing out while I was driving. I was able to get the truck parked at a truck stop without incident and call 911. I spent 11 hours in the ER and had a CT scan which came out negative and they took me off of the truck and driving and I wound up having to fly home while Randy had to get someone out to Ca. to get the truck!

I did appointments with my PMD and had a MRI and MRA on Thursday last week. The results: MRA= No aneurisms, blood clots, no strokes, no blocked arteries which means it was clean for the most serious things. The MRI shows a swelling of the right Eustachian tube and some damage done by radiation in the left which is actually nothing compared to the swelling. They do see a tiny little lesion in my front temporal lobe but I'm told not to worry about it. OK let out your breath!

BUT, that’s not the reason for me walking around like I’m drunk! What the diagnosis is: Benign Positional Vertigo (BPV) Whew! It’s treatable and curable and I get to go back to driving! And I know what to look for if it happens again! Anyway BPV is caused when the crystals that are in the Vestibule in the ear which lay on a bean like thingie in the ear which help you keep your balance come loose and float around and get into the semicircular canals and block them causing you to loose your balance, get dizzy and even cause nausea and fainting!

It was funny today at the ear doctors’ office as I did a hearing test which actually came out fairly well considering how I’ve been around some really loud equipment, music and people in my life! Then it was into another office to see the doctor and while in there we did blood pressure tests while standing, sitting and then laying down then the look into the ear and nose and then after a few other tests she takes my head and shakes it back and forth to “see if my marbles are loose” which I told her before she began that Barbara could verify with out touching me that they were! She took my head in her hands and actually shook it back and forth for 15 seconds (enough to get my eyes to bouncing around!) and then stopped and told me to look into her eyes (they were very pretty green eyes! LOL) and turned my head almost to where I could look behind me and tipped it back and she could tell from that almost what the problem was! A few more times of this and I know I could hear my marbles rolling around!

The final test was actually a sobriety test and when she told me I had to close my eyes and stand on my right foot I actually told her NO! I knew I couldn’t do it but I did and she had to hold me upright! Then it was close your eyes and March in place and when done I had rotated to the right and gone in a diagonal line to the right!

BPV is the diagnosis and I couldn’t be happier as the next thing on the list would have been Meniere’s Disease which is NOT curable and I’d loose my CDL!

I go in tomorrow for my treatment which is the only one and should be able to walk a straight line with no problem!

The bad news (there’s always some with me!) Because my boss hasn’t been getting paid by the cheap assed owner of the company he’s leased to, means I was already 2 weeks behind on pay and he was only able to pay me a partial pay check 2 weeks ago and nothing since then, Barb and I sold our wedding bands, took my motorcycle down to Performance Cycles to let them show it for sale, and I took 140 paper back books to all of the book stores that buy used books. I sold 6 for a total of $3.50 and Barb tried to sell some of her nicer clothing she can’t wear any more and made a whole $3.75 and some jewelry which I have no idea what she got for that!

I applied for unemployment and food stamps again and neither has started and the bills are sitting there wanting to be paid! Now it’s time to play the waiting game as to what happens first, get a doctors release back to work, or get unemployment payments coming in and I know I’ll get the food stamps because I haven’t made minimum wage for this month even if I get all that my boss owes me! Wow, to actually work for free! I never would have done it but I keep hoping that Charlie the owner will pay what he owes to Randy but I don’t think it’ll happen and Randy is in a hard place and a rock as he’s leased to the company that he’s the shop foreman for and pulling his truck out of the lease will look bad and the old man, and yes he’s 76 years old and IS loosing his marbles, because of some of the stupid assed messages we keep getting but anyway Barb is scared of me going back to work for Randy because of the pay problem! I need to be paid for what I do and I’m still waiting now for loads 3 weeks ago!

Then there is the truck I was driving. I spent all day Thursday the 6th waxing the outside of the poor thing (I HATE a faded red paint job!) and the inside had been detailed as well as I could do it working at truck stops over the past 2 months and it was spotless! I was down at the yard the week after I got back to get the rest of my things out of it and the to be polite, the Very over weight truck driver never once tried to clean his feet off, threw paper cups and the sticks from his corn dogs on the floor, I have to give him credit he DID have a trash bag hanging off of the passenger seat knob but it was filled with ding dongs and that sort of crap the reason for the sticks and paper cups in the floor! (My trash can is still in the truck with a trash bag in it right behind the drivers seat and EMPTY!) The ash tray was filled to over flowing and I had pulled most of the duct work out to clean the smoke out of it so I wouldn’t have to smell that smoke crap when I turned the air on! Oh well, when I go back I’ll have to completely clean the interior of the thing again!

Aside from all of the above, Air goes into the lungs and Air goes out! I’m fine!


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