Resolved question:
My wife is 24 years old patientold. She went through a test battery a little over a year ago to see if she some sort of attention disorder. The symptoms were obvious. The psychologist overseeing the test batteries said it was not an attention issue but memory loss. She recommended my wife get a CT Scan as soon as she could because she was concerned it was a oxygen/blood issue.
My wife was my girlfriend at the time and it took a while to get health insurance to move forward.
We still put it off because we wanted to move in a few months and would be in a better financial position. We figured it would expose a problem and then there would a lot of appointments, tests and treatments.
The following issue made us get her to a doctor.:
While she is working a job that isn't usually stressful, she started to have cloudy vision. Then she would feel pressure in her head described as intense. Then her vision would go from cloudy to tunneled and cloudy. Within about an hour, the symptoms seemed to let up. For about day after she had a splitting headache. Her mother told her it's just a migraine and my wife assumed it was true.
Time #2 was exactly the same but worse. Someone drove her home from work. She had broken vessels in her eyes. And she had a splitting headache for 3-4 days. After that she seemed a little, less articulate.
Time#3, same, but add the fact she said she couldn't see out of one of her eyes, she couldn't say words, and her coworker said her face looked like it's muscles weren't working on one side. (Since then, it's subtle but she slurs her words and has less comprehension) I was on the road when my wife called and I was asked her to see a neurologist as soon as she could. She made an appointment with a local family practice doctor. He had blood work done and said he saw nothing. He, at my wife's request for a CT scan, scheduled her for an MRI 45 days later. When I heard this I called his office and pushed the issue to have one scheduled at another hospital, 7 days later. Today, that doctor reviewed the MRI and said "it's clean" so that her issues were most likely nothing to worry about. And, that if it happens again, he would refer her to a neurologist. There is a real possibility that this doctor is dismissive based on other patient feedbacks. There is also the possibility that my wife went to him and forgot to tell him the majority of what her symptoms are (not unlikely). Either way, does her symptoms stand out as anything to you? And if so, what steps should we be taking to have it clearly diagnosed? I'm afraid that whatever it is, I would have to make sure she gets to the doctor when she has another episode. Otherwise they're just not going to see anything or look into anything.
Submitted:
4 Days
Category:
Neurologist, Medical
Hello,
Thank you for posting your query at DoctorSpring.com
I have noted your wife's symptoms. The most likely cause for her symptoms would be migraine with visual aura. Since she has frequent episodes, she should be started on preventive medications to reduce the chances of a similar episode occurring in the future.
In addition, in view of her other neurological symptoms such as decreased vision, speech problems, etc, we need to exclude other conditions also. The most important one are collagen vascular disease and vasculitis. These are inflammatory conditions, which cause narrowing of blood vessels in the brain.
I would recommend doing an angiogram (CT angiogram or DSA) to exclude vasculitis.
I hope it helps.
Best wishes,
Dr. Sudhir Kumar MD (Medicine), DM (Neurology)
Senior Consultant Neurologist