Bring a Hat

Time for the 24-hour EEG I talked about earlier. Wear a button-up shirt, make sure your hair is clean, and bring a hat. Those were my instructions. The plan was to hook me up to a small computer I would carry around with me to see what they could determine from my brain waves or something. I would sleep at home and go back the next day for them to remove the electrodes and review the feedback on the computer to rule out epilepsy. That's really the key to diagnosing MS - ruling everything else out but no one told me that until much later.

I happen to have a super cute wide brimmed blue hat and a soft denim button-up so I take a shower and I'm ready! I get to the hospital and the guy starts attaching electrodes to my scalp with none other than model airplane glue and he just keeps adding more. By the 15th one, I'm beginning to wonder about the hat. When he attaches the 32nd, and final, electrode, the hat is nothing but a joke. I wind up with an enormous "pony tail" of electrodes, bound together with a single rubber band that runs down my back and attaches to a small computer that hangs around my neck. I looked like a cross between the Predator and Terence Trent D'Arby. Not a good look for me. I decide the hat is just going to make me look more ridiculous but whatever, I may as well go big, right?

By the time I get home and take off the hat, the model airplane glue has started to make my hair a little greasy. By bedtime, it's downright disgusting. Did I mention this is a 24-hour test? I prepared myself for a greasy, uncomfortable night and decided to sleep on the couch to save Craig from having to wake up next to Predator/Terence.

Little brother calls in the morning to check on me. I grab my smokes and head out onto the back porch to chat with him a while. As we were talking, I caught a glimpse of myself in the sliding glass door and actually startled myself. My hair hung in big greasy strands between the electrodes, the rubber band had broken sometime in the night so wires were shooting out of my head in every direction. It was hysterical and awful at the same time. I was more than grateful for our privacy fence.

The walk into the hospital was embarrassing but I put my hat on and made it without too many stares from others. While someone removed the electrodes, someone else checked the computer data. Turns out, something had gone awry at 21 hours and the computer had stopped recording. I was pissed just thinking about having to repeat the whole thing but the doctor assured me they'ed gotten enough.

I. Do. NOT. Have. Epilepsy.