Dr. Coneman

Dad and I stayed overnight in Billings, and the next morning we went in for the spinal tap that Coneman ordered. I was a little nervous remembering what the emergency doctor at UC Davis had said about risks associated with a spinal tap. She didn’t say what they were though. Hell, there are risks associated with everything, and we needed to find out what was wrong with me. The procedure was completed and as we left, I was casually told to lay flat for 24 hours to avoid the spinal headache.
I was told: “If you get the spinal headache, go to the emergency room. They will take some blood from your arm and patch it into where the fluid was taken from your back.”
Me: “How will I know if it is a regular headache or the spinal headache?”
Them: “You will know. It will be an experience.”
Dad and I drove the two hours back to Miles City. I laid the seat back so I was almost flat. It was good to be home. I went in the house and I lay down. Dad made dinner and we went to bed. In the middle of the night I got up to pee. On the way back to bed I started to black out, I stopped in my tracks. “DAD, I’m blacking out.” Dad hopped out of bed and put his hands under my arms. I passed out and he dragged me over to my bed (I’m no tiny girl, Dad and I weigh about 150 pounds apiece). I came back a few seconds after he got me onto bed. “Good thing I was here,” he said. “Good thing,” I said.
Our next appointment with Coneman was the following week. He told us the test results. The MRI of my brain seemed normal, blood tests were negative for Lyme disease and Epstein-Barr, but the T-count was 99.
The T-count is supposed to be close to zero, less than five is acceptable. The T-count measures lymphocyes (white blood cells acting as part of the immune system) in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) which insulates the brain and spinal cord. If there are a lot of lymphocytes, it means that your body has mounted an attack on an intruder. The high T-count in my CSF indicated an infection or the presence of a virus that my body was attacking somewhere in my spinal cord or BRAIN!
Coneman said the elevated T-count was indicative of an infection that was now gone. Again, he said I probably had an “inflammatory process.” “You just have to wait for it to run it’s course,” he said, “it will resolve on its own. You just have to wait.” There was an emphasis on waiting. I didn’t know what an “inflammatory process” was. Still don’t.
While discussing the MRI, Coneman mentioned the possibility of multiple sclerosis (MS). The MRI showed no lesions characteristic of MS, but diseases take on many forms and I could be in the early stage of the disease. This was upsetting news. We went home to wait out the “inflammatory process” and think about MS.
While we waited, I still expected to be back to work in a week or two. How long could this go on? I had so much to do. My boss told me everything was going fine, but every now and then he would call with a question. The nature of his questions proved it would be a lot easier if I was back at work. I just wanted to get back to work.
While we waited for the next appointment, I mostly laid on the futon on the porch when I wasn’t in bed. Dad fixed my meals, concerned friends visited, and I tried to get enough energy each day to stumble around outside for a few minutes.
Sometime in early June I woke up with a numb tongue. It wasn’t really numb, more like tingly. And just on the tip. Weird. Also, from time to time in June, as I was laying still on the futon, I could feel a very gentle sensation in my head. I can only describe it as a feeling of tiny flowers opening up inside my head. A very faint tickling sensation. On the phone, I said, “MOM! I CAN FEEL THE LESIONS FORMING!” MS was a real possibility. Scary.
Mom took a week off work and flew to Miles City to be with me and Dad and to cook for us. She was very upset. Mimi’s father-in-law prescribed her some Xanax to help her through these times. She was losing weight.
One night Mom cooked a turkey dinner party for my friends. My boss had killed it earlier that spring. Mom had a great time preparing the bird, and she has recounted the story many times. The frozen turkey was plucked and covered in fine hair. She didn’t want to spend the time pulling them all out, so she shaved the bird, with my razor that she got out of the shower. As she was preparing to stuff it, she found that the crop that hadn’t been removed. She was excited. “IT’S FULL OF WORMS, AND HUGE GRASSHOPPERS!” She pointed out how the grasshoppers had been perfectly preserved in the crop in the freezer, they looked brand new. “You can see all the little spines on their legs.”
Mom had to fly back to Auburn. Dad and I waited. At the next appointment with Coneman, I was examined and I told him about the numb tongue. He thought it was odd and attributed it to the inflammatory process, he said it would subside as the inflammatory process subsided. I just had to wait. This did not satisfy Dad.
Dad: “Could you do more tests? How long will we have to wait?”
Coneman: “Can’t you wait?”
When we got back to Miles City, Dad called Mom and told her about the “can’t you wait” comment. They decided that Coneman had taken things as far as he would, and they couldn’t wait. It was time to go back to California. Dad told me we would just go for a couple of weeks, and then we’d be back. I called my boss. I had plenty of sick leave built up for a couple of weeks. Dad packed me a light suitcase, and we left the next day.
We stayed the night in Burley, Idaho. I had a lot of trouble making it up the stairs to our room. Dad walked up behind me to make sure I didn’t fall backwards down the stairs. He held onto my belt. In the morning, we had breakfast at Dad’s Travel Plaza. Our breakfast booth had a roof over it like a covered wagon. As we drove, Mom searched for a neurologist in the area who could see us soon. She settled on one who could see us the following week. She chose him because he was on an MS board.