From my other blog Update Mini-Stroke or Ear Infection????

To recap briefly, 12/11/09 cooking bacon and changing light bulb under hood on stove. Got dizzy, light headed, nauseous and threw up. A couple days later skin on right side of face went shot of novocain numb, and couldn't swallow except with difficulty choking easily. Since I wrote the original post on 1/16/10 there have been changes, improvements, different diagnosis'...
To start the difficulty swallowing and choking on food finally pretty much went away around the end of January. The numb skin is better, less but still numb. It starts at the nape of my neck, comes over my head down my face through the nose to my chin. My head is split right through the middle, right side numb, the left side normal. I got several opinions from friends that it was a TIA, a stroke, a brain tumor...
I broke down and got medical Insurance, and found it incredibly difficult to find a doctor. I had a list from the insurance company and called them. Nobody was taking new patients. Finally one considered taking me on, so I filled out a bunch of paperwork about two or three weeks ago, and they finally called two days ago with an appointment the end of this month, on the 28th. It's nice to see the medical profession doing so well that they don't need, or want, new customers (patients). Anyway, tired of waiting, I went to the hospital in Hamilton last week. Everyone was very nice, I saw the ER doctor, after talking to me and doing a cat scan and blood tests, he came back and said not to over-react, but they had found several ???? infarctions in the pictures of my brain. That he didn't think it was a stroke or a brain tumor, that based on the infarctions it might be MS. That I should make an appointment with the Neurologist, get a MIR which will give better pictures, and not to worry... Right, don't worry.
So I called, made an appointment, and saw the Neurologist yesterday. After talking to me, doing some simple tests, watching me walk, etc. She told me that in her opinion, it wasn't MS, that I'd had one or more TIA's. She'd looked at the pictures from the CT scan and it was too unclear to say what the problem was for sure.
So I'm now taking more tests, before I left the hospital I had two ultra sounds, one of the arteries in my neck, and one of my heart. The one of my heart showed a possible small hole, I think she said in the atria wall, which if it's there, could possibly have allowed a clot to pass through, maybe causing the ATI, if that's what happened to me. The MIR is being set up, who knows what else. So far they've told me to keep taking the baby aspirin, which I prescribed myself in December when this started.
So now I go back today for more tests, some kind of bubble test ultra sound, and to see a cardiologist. The good news is it's a heart problem. As I said to a friend, a heart problem can be fixed, MS can't, so I'll take a heart problem. So that's where I'm at now