A Bubble

May 17, 2005

Yes! I had my 2nd mapping today. I was a mite stressed as I traveled alone this time. Baltimore and John Hopkins is easy to get to, but not to get away from. The going was easy, the trip home made my blood pressure go up!

She (Jennifer Yeagle, my audi) changed quite a few things today and tweaked 4 programs and sent me home with “homework”. I’m to see her again on Friday. She was able to get some of the “buzz” out of the tail end of words that I was hearing.

I did show a place on my head above my magnet that felt “strange”. The only way I know to describe it is, you know when you open a coffee can with the can opener, but then use the plastic lid on it to keep the coffee fresh as you use it? Well you know how the lid has some “give” to it after it gets air in it? Well that’s what this place on my head feels like. At first she thought it was fluid but she finally called my doc down. (He’s on a different floor). He wasn’t in – seems he was in D.C. doing some sort of meeting. So she called his colleague in, Dr. Howard. He said it was an air pocket, and “did I know how rare this was?” He had his intern come in to feel my head too, because “you won’t see this very often”. They were relieved it wasn’t fluid or blood, OR infection. Anyway, he thinks it will “resolve itself”, but I’m to be mapped again on Friday. He wants Dr. Niparko to see it if it’s still there. Evidently, my allergies (which are really bad right now), and my sinus cavity, blowing my nose, etc., are probably the culprits. It evidently rarely happens, but it does on occasion and evidently to allergy sufferers who are recently implanted. So they want me to take a stronger medicine to alleviate my allergies, such as Claritin-D. The goal is that I don’t have to blow my nose and sniff so much. Ya right. Don’t they know how bad a transplanted southern gal’s allergies are when she moves up north to new trees, flowers, pollen? Hello? After almost 2 years, I still have not adjusted, nor have my children.

As I left today and stepped on the elevator I heard it TALK. I didn’t type that wrong, it TALKED to me! It said what floor we were on and the people in the elevator had to motion me inside. I was standing in the way of the sensor on the door, and it would not close. And yes, you guessed it! My mouth WAS hanging open again. THEN I heard technology speak AGAIN!

As I was leaving the parking garage, I came up to the automated attendant machine, and rolled my window down. I stuck my yellow card into the slot like the picture showed, and it swallowed my ticket and said, “Thank you”! I grinned from ear to ear and said, “Your welcome”, and patted the machine with my left hand. I looked up and a real-life security guard (big African American fellow) was standing there with his arms crossed looking at me. He was a shaking his head from side to side, as if saying “some women are plumb crazy!” LOL! Oh well, if he thinks I’m nuts that’s ok. I giggled all the way back to 40-W until traffic started getting bad, and then I quit giggling.

Anyhow, I have some wonderful new tweaked programs to try. She also would like for me to call some automated numbers on the phone and see if I can understand them. She also gave me some listening programs. So I have a lot to do before Friday!