The next morning the doc said I was free to go. I asked about the tox test and he said it hadn't come back yet. As of this writing I still don't know if they found anything in my system. The doc said no driving until I talked to a neurologist. There was interminable paperwork; I had to fill out an Incident Report for the missing nipple ring. They rolled me out to the front of the hospital -- which was the first time I'd seen it -- and we headed home.

When I made the appointment at the neurologist, the desk lady asked me if I knew how to get to the hospital and I told her I had been born there.

The neurologist did a bunch of tests, took my medical and drug history ["patient admits tobacco use, patient denies alcohol use..."] and said I needed to take some brain tests. No matter what the tests said, I would not be driving until March. I whined and complained a bit, but it was obvious that was the way it was going to be. Since my sister has epilepsy, I am assumed to be "at risk" and unsafe at any speed. I got a lecture on the evils of drugs, and the evils of tobacco ["is this a brain thing?" I was thinking], asked if I had learned my lesson -- more on that in a bit -- and sent home.

The tests were spooky but ultimately no big deal compared to the hospital stay. In fact, due to my somewhat obsessive compulsive nature, I found that I liked the clanging noise of the MRI machine quite a bit. They had to x-ray my eyes before I went in because the MRI has a big magnet in it and if you have any metal in your body it will suck it right out. I used to work with metal so, eyeball x-ray. The EEG lady was really nice and didn't seem to mind at all that I hadn't washed my hair despite the EEG fact sheet saying WASH YOUR HAIR in a very large font. She said "now try to sleep..." after she stuck 25 little sticky things to me and flashed bright lights in my eyes. I could hear the tiny skritchings of the machine which would explode into jangley chaos when I moved my tongue or swallowed.

Upshot of the tests? Normal. Or, normal enough. They found no evidence of seizure activity, which means something but not much. When I get back to Seattle I'm going to try to get my medical records sent over and look at pictures of my brain.

I spent two weeks at my Mom's place kinda recouping and making a lot of phone calls and getting my shit together.

what does it all mean...?