We recently spent a few hours at the emergency room because my husband wasn’t feeling well and I was concerned he might be having a stroke. Thankfully he wasn’t, but I am happy that we went to have things checked anyway. The symptoms of a stroke are so similar to what we deal with on a daily basis, balance issues, foggy thought processes, slurred speech, weakness on one side. It could so easily have been a stroke and, had we ignored it, the results could have been devastating.

The team at the hospital was responsive and caring. The minute I mentioned the word stroke, we were pushed ahead of everyone else. He was immediately taken in for a CT scan and the ER doctor and on-site neurologist were there to speak with me. Staff kept me informed every step of the way and I felt that he was getting the care he needed. As the afternoon progressed, he started to feel a bit better so they moved from stroke protocols to see what might be going on that would make his PD symptoms spike. Blood and urine tests came back normal for him. Four hours later, when he seemed to be feeling much better, we were sent home. Since they were unable to locate a cause, we will be working his PCP and regular neurologist to see if they have any thoughts.

Trips to the ER are no fun and both of us were physically and emotionally exhausted by the time we got home. While I was relieved that it wasn’t a stroke, it was frustrating to have the staff say that they thought it was his PD acting up without offering a reason. I wish they could have told us what triggered it, but suspect that we will never really know. Perhaps this is a simply a peculiarity of his version of Parkinson’s Disease. He has good and bad PD days, this was a particularly bad one. Knowing this is a possibility won’t change my response when this happens again because it could have been something worse. PD does not protect him from other things, it just complicates them when they happen.