Here's something I never used to know about. Autonomic Dysreflexia... bet you've never heard of it either? Anyway whatever it might be it looks as if I've had a dose of it over the last few days and not realised!!! So what is it you say? Ok, Ok, are you sitting down, then wrinkle that brow and concentrate very hard.............what happens is this, a signal is trying to get to your brain, but cant because of the cord damage. This causes a reflex to happen and the blood vessels restrict causing blood pressure to shoot up . The brain is trying to send a message back down to the cord to tell the blood vessels to open up, but this message cannot get past the level of injury either. So the blood vessels above the injury open up, but it is not enough to keep blood pressure down. As a result blood pressure just keeps rising which can cause a stroke, heart attack or death. The number 1 cause of this is a full bladder and UTIs.
Well I've had the most horrendous migraine for several days now and given my recent problems this looks like the main cause. So what can we do about it? The most likely option would be plan B. Plan B is a Supra Pubic Catheter, whereby you get a permanent catheter routed through your belly button or nearby. Its easier to control and you don't get so many infections as a rule. Its down sides are obviously it doesn't do a lot for making you feel 'normal', and it isn't readily reversible so pretty much once its done that's it. I have to be honest in that this isn't one of the events in life that I've been eager to try, you know I could probably have gone all through my life without ever trying this out. We'll see how it goes.
No comments:
Post a Comment