I had a very odd experience this past Monday that led to me going to the emergency room and because I don’t have a journal I thought that I’d blog about it. I also think that it’s good to let people know in case it ever happens to them.

So I was as my work on Monday and about 2 hours in I started noticing that I had large blind spots in my vision. This wasn’t just little spots that I couldn’t see but large parts of my vision that were either totally gone or were surrounded by a weird blinding bright light. Now, I’ve had this happen before and figured it would go away which it did only to come back a little while later only this time accompanied by severe numbing in my left hand and face. At this point I’m a little weirded out and I start to think something is really wrong. Around that time I had to make a call to someone for a report I was working on and as I attempted to type while listening to her I notice that I physically couldn’t and what she was saying I was unable to understand or get my hands to type. It was almost as if the neurons that were suppose to fire didn’t. The room started going askew and I felt as if everything was closing in on me. Inside I felt as if I was on a rollercoaster ride that something was going terribly wrong with and the sheer terror of believing that I was going to die was setting in all at once and there was nothing I could do. It was like falling down a hole in which there was nothing to grab on to and nothing to stop your rapid decent.

At that point I promptly got off the phone and turned to my buddy Mike F. who’s desk is next to mine and told him that I needed to go to the hospital because something is very wrong. On the way to the hospital I tried some deep breathing as well as well as a few other “centering” activities to try to slow my heart rate but nothing was working. To make a long story short: after waiting in the ER waiting room for hours I felt pretty much back to normal aside from a large amount of anxiety about what just happened. They did blood work and ran a CAT scan. The diagnosis they came up with is that I experienced an “ocular migraine” followed by a panic attack.
After some research on the subject I believe that it is exactly what I experienced. I won’t quote everything from what I’ve found but it is really a fascinating occurrence and many people speculate that it is what Lewis Carroll had when he wrote some of Alice in Wonderland.

To quote one of the websites I found on the subject:

“Today, many neurologists use the term "Alice in Wonderland syndrome" when referring to the visual disturbances and hallucinations that can be part of migraine aura, the neurologic churning that can occur before migraine onset and affect vision in very odd ways…Auras typically last 5 to 20 minutes and involve symptoms such as vertigo (motion sickness or dizziness), imbalance, confusion or numbness; but most auras consist of visual disturbances such as partial vision loss, the appearance of "special effects" and distortion of objects.”

So there you are. In some ways I’m glad this happened to me. I see several clients who deal with anxiety and panic attacks and I feel so much more empathy for them now than before. I guess I took for granted how scary panic attacks can be, and now I never will. I also think the experience gave me a little more appreciation for those that are dealing with mental illness. It honestly is the most scary and freaky thing to have your reality messed with.

Tiff and I were enjoying a lazy Sunday yesterday and in switching in between various NFL games we came to a channel that was showing Back to the Future II. I didn’t think anything of it at first but then I found it virtually impossible to change the channel. It sucked me right in and I couldn’t stop watching until the movie had ended. This got me to thinking: There are some movies that truly are just so entertaining that it doesn’t matter how many times they are on TV or how many times you’ve seen them, you are compelled to watch.

This is a fairly short and exclusive list but I think it deserves some discussion. Here are the ones that I came up with just off the top of my head, in no particular order:

The Shawshank Redemption
Back to the Future I and II
The Princess Bride
A Christmas Story
Groundhogs Day
The Matrix

So which ones am I missing? What movies are on almost every weekend (or seasonally) that suck you in? Or what is it about these movies that render us so debilitated that we can’t change the channel?

First off, I apologize for being so infrequent with my blog entries lately. This semester and last are quite taxing with my work, internship, clinic, classes, and my thesis. I haven’t had time to catch up on reading some of my friends blogs let alone actually writing my own. Anyway, on with the blogging...

So something that has always perplexed me is using the term “mid-west” when referring to Illinoise (Come on bring the), Iowa, etc, and even as far east as Ohio. How in the bad place is THAT the mid-west?!?! Try an experiment:
1.Look at a map of the continental United States.
2. Divide it in half.
3. Look at the middle (or mid) western part of the country. Is Illinois close to that? Is Ohio? See my point?

After extensive research on the subject (one Wikipedia search) I’ve learned that it has to do with where the “west” was before the Louisiana Purchase. Whhhhaaaaa? How long ago was that? And yet we persist on perpetuating this term? Baah!

So I am here to take a stand so that no more should we, as a people, have to call those states the “mid-western” states, which clearly they are not. From now on the mid-western states will be known as Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and MAYBE Utah. The states previously known as the mid-western states will now be the mid-eastern. So say we all!

Who’s with me?