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No Regrets by Lisa Hammond

I recently went through an experience that turned out to be life changing. I want to share it with you because many of my friends and family have expressed that hearing my story has helped them to look closer at their own priorities and their own lives.

I woke up one morning a few months ago and felt really dizzy and couldn't quite focus my eyes. I had been burning the candle at both ends for a while and assumed the exhaustion was just catching up with me. I grabbed my laptop and got back in bed figuring I would just start my day from there. I tried to answer a few emails but discovered my eyes just wouldn't cooperate. So I I turned off my laptop and headed for the shower. It was at this point that I stopped to tweeze my eyebrows and that is when I saw my eyes—my mismatched eyes! One pupil was fully dilated and the other eye was just the opposite.

Now those of you in-the-know are gasping right now. Well, I wasn't one of those people. So although I though it was very strange and I was really dizzy I still went ahead and got in the shower. As time went on I was feeling more and more miserable but I had an important meeting at the office and I was still trying to get there on time. That's when the phone rang. It was my sister Diane wondering if I had read her emails yet. I told her I couldn't see my computer screen very well because my eyes were wigging out. When I told her what was going on she about choked. She was one of those people in-the-know. She told me to get to the doctor NOW.

I called my husband to come home and drive me to the doctor. I went to my primary physician, who happened to be in the middle of an emergency so a new doctor examined me. He took one look at me and went to discuss his findings with my doctor. My doctor then came in the room to examine me and then told me he feared this could be serious. After he left the room I could hear him out in the hall calling another doctor and telling them he was sending over an emergency patient—me. When I got to that doctor he examined me right away, and tried all kinds of gadgets and eye drops. Yet nothing seemed to change anything and I was feeling worse and worse. Then the Ophthalmologist told me I needed to go to yet another doctor and he stepped out in the hall to make a phone call very similar to the one he had just received, to a Neurologist asking her to see me as an emergency patient. It was about that time that I started wondering if this really could be a serious problem. Suddenly that important meeting I had at the office didn't seem so important after all.

By the time we got to the Neurologist I wasn't as worried about what was going on as I was about curing it so my eyes would go back to normal and I would stop throwing up. After she examined me she made her own phone call sending me off for an emergency MRI of my brain. She found a facility across town willing to stay open late to see me. We got stuck in rush hour traffic getting there so we were even later than expected, yet when we arrived the staff was patiently waiting, and had even filled out part of my paper work for me. Here I had kept them late and yet they were all being so nice. The woman who did the MRI could tell I wasn't coping too well with the special face mask and the confined space and she kept reassuring me it would be over soon. And thirty minutes and two IV's later it was.

I am embarrassed to admit that even after all I had been through that day I still wasn't that worried…until we were on our way back to the waiting room and a doctor I hadn't met stopped me in the hall. He said he knew my Neurologist and that she was very conservative and that if she was concerned enough that this might be a brain tumor that she sent me in for a STAT MRI there was a good chance I should not wait until morning to go to the hospital. What??? Did he just say brain tumor? Me? Once the doctor saw the shocked look on my face he asked me if in fact she had mentioned this possibility. I told him she had listed that among the things that could be wrong, along with a stroke and a few other things I had apparently ruled out too soon. He then told me after reading my file he decided to come back and review my MRI that night and asked us if we would please wait.

We went back to the waiting room for what turned out to be the longest 20 minutes of my life. It was only then that I finally realized what I may be facing. The staff there could not have been nicer. They were so compassionate and patient about having to stay even later. The doctor called us back and gave us the good news—my brain was normal. I asked him if I could get that in writing since there were plenty of people, including myself, who would question whether or not I was normal!

I was so touched by the caring way the staff at Nevada Imaging treated me that I sent over a cookie bouquet the next day with a thank you note. The nurse there called me that afternoon to say how much they appreciated the cookies and to let me know how worried they all were. She told me the doctor had never done that before—stay and meet with the patient rather than report back to the other doctor—so she knew he must have thought this was very serious.

After several more tests and lots of blood work my Neurologist determined that my systems stemmed from an uncommon virus that caused a rare kind of migraine. I have had migraines before and they were not like this. For starters my head didn't really hurt that bad, it was more of a take-an-Advil kind of headache, not a migraine. Well, who knew you could have migraines without headaches? It took about a week for my pupils to get completely back to the right size and start feeling better.

The good news is that while many of those around me were freaking out, I for some reason wasn't that worried until the Radiologist / Neurologist stopped me in the hall.

I felt too awful to be nervous so my panic was short lived. I soon went back to my normal hectic schedule.

About a week after all of this happened I had to go out of town on a business trip to the East Coast. The time change always throws my schedule off so I was up late one night trying to find some mindless TV that would put me to sleep. Suddenly there on the TV was a woman talking about being diagnosed with brain tumor. Not the mind numbing program I was hoping for but I was riveted by her story. The documentary followed her from diagnoses through treatment. I watched the documentary for the next two hours with tears streaming down my face. It suddenly hit me.

Why do we think these things always happen to other people? It is so easy to take our lives for granted. I am sure it was no accident that I ended up channel surfing that night and seeing that documentary. Her story didn't have a happy ending. Her brain tumor was aggressive and even with the most advanced treatments and medical trials available this amazing mother of three died. As the documentary followed her six month journey she never once said she wished she had cleaned her house more. She never once complained about her cellulite. She embraced her three young kids in a way we all should every day. She didn't mention the bad times she clung to the good ones.

This experience seems to have hit me more deeply after the fact than during it. I dodged a big bullet and I don't want to forget that. I want to remember to love on my loved ones more. I want to remember the things I would have regretted not doing, and do them! We all say we want to follow our passions and live our dreams someday, but we never know when we will be out of days.

I share this with you in the hopes we all start loving and living out loud!

Dream Big,
Lisa Hammond
[email protected]

Dream Big! Finding the Courage to Follow Your Dreams and Laugh at Your Nightmares

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