Passion, Experience & Growth

An Night In Hollywood

November 11, 2019

For a year and a half the commute from Glendale to West Hollywood was spectacular—every morning and every night, scenes out of a movie.

Just eight miles each way, but nearly two years later, recovering from those years, and all of those trips, out of hundreds of thousands of miles I have driven all around the globe, those eight miles in Los Angeles still stand out as the hardest in the world.

Driving under the lights of Hollywood Blvd, detouring onto Santa Monica Blvd in the morning, or blasting up the 2, or blasting down the 101, every experience was magic. Sunset Blvd became "home away from home."

But the damage to every other car on the road told the tale—nobody escapes without damage—Joanne's poor VW Beetle was rear-ended on the highway twice during the same time period.

Throughout it all, I knew I was being guided.

Some of the encounters with weather; water 18” deep in a January deluge—homeless running, jumping, falling into the road in front of me—the destitution of lives at the edge of existence—and the way of life at all levels—it tested my limits, stressed me for an hour and a half each day, and nearly broke me. Literally.

In November 2019, still undergoing twice-weekly chiropractor treatments for the unrelenting pain that had begun in April, my doctor announced that he was going to cease treatment: At a routine check-point, looking at my X-rays, he had spotted a calcification in the vertebra of my neck which concerned him.

His concern: a potential Vertebral Aneurism.

Aneurysms of the vertebral artery are rare, comprising less than 5 percent of all aneurysms.

...

Symptoms of a ruptured aneurysm / subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH):

- sudden onset of a severe headache (often described as “the worst headache of my life”)

- nausea and vomiting

- stiff neck

- transient loss of vision or consciousness

Joanne was able to get me scheduled with her Beverly Hills doctor the same day. I was scheduled for a CT scan the next morning.

Waiting for the CT scan, I held Joanne in my arms as she cried.

That afternoon, the result came back: my neck was OK, no Aneurism. Wonderful.

But incidentally, my doctor had also ordered a CT scan of my head. And, it showed a Subdural Hematoma.

A pool of blood between the brain and its outermost covering.

Subdural hematoma can be a medical emergency. It’s usually caused by a head injury strong enough to burst blood vessels. This can cause pooled blood to push on the brain. Age, blood-thinning drugs, and alcohol abuse increase risk.

Headache, confusion, vomiting, slurred speech, or coma may appear immediately or weeks after a head injury. In some cases, a subdural hematoma may not cause symptoms.

Rare

Fewer than 200,000 US cases per year

My new doctor was beside herself—she had seen me just the morning before, and I had seemed perfectly healthy. She didn’t want to tell me to go to the ER. But she couldn’t refer me to a clinical setting with that diagnosis. The circumstances were unprecedented.

She gave me her personal cell phone number, begged me not to share it, but invited me to have the ER personnel talk with her if there was confusion about the need for the follow-up CT scan.

I drove to the ER—with a Subdural Hematoma. We waited with the crowd, I was admitted, and late that night I got my follow-up CT scan for my Subdural Hematoma.

…it was a typical night in Hollywood.

Epilogue

The next day wasn’t as exciting. I had to wait around until noon to be discharged. The Neurosurgeon stopped by in the morning, did a perfunctory assessment, explained that I seemed fine, and that from the new scan, it appeared that I had a 8mm bleed on the right side of my brain that had occurred roughly six weeks earlier. It was being reabsorbed into my body.

If not for my Chiropractor’s concern about my X-ray, I would never have known.

Ignorance isn’t always healthy, but it is bliss.