Essentially they shocked the nerves in my hands and legs with electricity to make them move and measure the results. Then they came in and took a tiny needle with a stethoscope on it and poked it into me to listen to the electricity travel through my muscles.
It was super fun (that sentence oozes with sarcasm).
And I was fine. More than fine actually. With the amount of weakness I exhibited in the hospital, he really thought I would have permanent damage. And there wasn't any. He commented how I was doing extraordinarily well and didn't need to see me for three months. He cleared me to work and travel as much as I felt I could.
He also confirmed that I'm not crazy, and that doing things like driving and playing the piano and organ really do take more neural energy because the signals have to take the long way through my nerves instead of travelling along the outside quick route - the myelin sheaths - you know, because they're broken.
But the most interesting thing he said was this; had one thing gone differently that Tuesday (the one I ended up in the hospital)... things would have ended up much, MUCH worse. Had I not called the Teledoc and that doctor had told me to go to the ER, had the ER doc not followed his gut and insisted we get the neurologist involved, had they decided to use the lumbar puncture results as the determining factor in the diagnosis and not done other tests... the disease would have been allowed to progress unchecked. I could have been hospitalized for months. I could have even died.
But that isn't how things were. Everything lined up perfectly so I got the care I needed. And I will be fine.
I am so grateful for that. Some people might say I should be upset with God that I even got this disease. But from what I can tell, He was there helping things to go well. I can see so many blessings from this; I am learning to listen to my body again (and its a process), I learned to accept help, I felt loved and cared for... and there were so many other things.
