Getting diagnosed with a stroke

⁉️ Disclaimer

Hey everyone, welcome to what seems to be my first blog entry. Definitely not what I had in mind when I decided to get back into writing, but here we are. The following entry was written over the span of roughly a week and documents a somewhat concerning adventure. I know this isn't your typical introduction post, but my plan is to have a separate page in the blog overview for that. So...

🧭 How did we even get here?

Oh man, this was one hell of a trip.

So I spent the last few days setting up a mail provider at our website Ender-development.org and changed my addresses on all my atmosphere accounts in preparation for the Field Reporter program offered by the @leaflet.pub people. (When you read this, I'll have already published the first issue of my weekly newsletter "The Second Cup".)

After finishing all of this, it was already a few hours past midnight, so I headed to bed to get some rest. After waking up the following morning, I felt something was off - I was deaf on one side. After a small panic attack, I tried to get up and then the nausea hit me in the face and I almost threw up - guess that's what you get when you lose your balance because of a dysfunctional ear.

So after spending the rest of the day mostly lying around and feeling seasick nonstop, I just tried to get some rest, kinda hoping it was just a weird sleeping position from the night before. Guess what - the next morning nothing changed. I asked a close relative to drive me to the ED of our local hospital. Never in my life would I have been able to get there myself. After waiting what felt like an eternity, more tests, even more waiting, a CT scan and even more waiting, the first diagnosis on the table was stroke. I was like "what? At my age? I'm not even 30 yet!" and even the doc looked worried, knowing it was atypical but explaining: "before we can rule it out as a cause, we have to treat it like one".

Well, there goes my weekend and probably the next two weeks of work as well. And it's not like I can simply do some more tests and work on things in between. Anything other than lying flat in bed felt like the ground was shaking uncontrollably. After what felt like the worst 24 hours of my life, my brain kinda began to adapt to my new "situation" - what an incredible thing we have in our skulls! So at least sitting for extended periods became somewhat manageable, and it would be only a few more hours before getting all the test results gathered over the last day.

It was already Friday, and I still hadn't finished my debut Atmosphere Field Reporter issue, which I'd originally planned for Tuesday but had to push back because my life currently consists of reorganizing my calendar at least three times a week - is this healthy? Definitely not! Will I keep doing it? Just a little bit longer. It'll get better eventually, I promise. At least I hope so. There are a few things to figure out, but things should slow down over the next 2 weeks as long as nothing new comes up - still desperately hoping it doesn't.

🛟 Leaflet to the rescue

Anyway, back to the newsletter. Biggest thanks to the Leaflet people again for actually having a pretty good editor when working on my smartphone. Still a bit buggy in some sections, but I blame this on the Orion Browser I use along with my selection of plugins. (Anyway, how I use my phone could also be a blog entry on its own.) Nonetheless, I was able to finish it during the day between talks with various doctors, an MRI, and multiple ultrasounds across my heart and head.

In the end, they updated the diagnosis - it's not related to any neurological issues, so the stroke was off the table. I don't know the last time I felt like such a weight off my shoulders, but that still left me with a deaf ear and a brain halfway adapted to my seasickness. Later that day I got transferred - bye, stroke station, welcome to the ENT station - with high hopes of meeting the specialists who'd give confident answers on how they'd solve my misery.

Let's just say the answer didn't fully convince me. The plan was to keep me in over the weekend, which was fine by me, and treat me with a set of injections. It looked like my medical knowledge lacks quite a bit, as I'm unable to correlate how putting something into my bloodstream would make my deaf ear function again - but who knows? They are the experts and probably have to deal with people like me all the time.

They continued with the plan that if we don't achieve any meaningful improvements to my hearing, they'd cut my ear open to check if all the membranes are still intact. Yikes. Not that I fear operations or anything, but having this as the only viable solution at that point makes me feel a little uncomfortable.

Besides that, I'm supposed to further train my brain to live and work with this new sense of balance. Thinking about living like this for many years to come makes my stomach hurt - like, literally. I have never been seasick before, but I imagine this is how it feels - turning your head and the floor rises and sinks like little waves on the ocean.

🗓️ Counting days

And so a weekend turned into another week, and instead of having the surgery, they tried direct injections into the ear in hopes of achieving better results. Turns out there was an improvement, but we're still far from getting back to normalcy - and so it was Wednesday when they returned to surgery as a last resort.

By now the deadline for the next Second Cup issue was quickly approaching, and the only thing I had somewhat presentable was the interview section. Luckily, by now I managed to get access to one of my laptops, so at least writing should become a bit easier - the Leaflet editor works much better in an appropriate browser window. Also, spoiler alert - an overview of my machines and setups is another thing I wanna write about, especially after doing another deep dive with NixOS and hopefully having the setup I always wanted instead of copying someone else's.

Another thing I noticed when reading the first issue of The Second Cup newsletter was my lack of proofreading. I guess my English wasn't as good as I thought, or it was just stress causing me to mess up so many little things. Anyway, I already went back over it multiple times, so by now most of the typos should hopefully be fixed.

⚙️ Grinding through it.

So here we are again. It's almost Friday, the surgery happened this morning, and the time in between was spent resting and finishing the second issue of my newsletter. Looks like I made it in time for the deadline, and it's already been approved by my interview guest, so I can publish it tomorrow. Furthermore, it seems like I'll finally be able to go back home. Some final checkups in the morning and that's it. I guess it will also be time to release this first blog entry, as my little adventure will be over soon.

🌼 What is happening with this blog?

It may come as a surprise, but I don't intend to write about my health all the time. Honestly speaking, that was the first real health incident for me in the past six years. What I'm aiming to write about here is the stuff that's on my mind on a more day-to-day basis. I have a lot of niche interests - I research a ton of things for fun because I like the feeling of "falling into a rabbit hole".

Nonetheless, there will also be stuff that isn't really a deep dive into a rabbit hole, but something I work on or things I wanna talk about and don't really have an audience who'd listen to it. So you may as well see this as the outlet for all the lingering thoughts I come across, loose ideas, or topics I have the urge to talk about.

If this sounds like something you wanna follow along, I'm happy to entertain you. If you want something with more substance or structure, feel free to check out my other publications. Hope you have a nice day, and I'll be back later.

~ Enderman