Elizabeth Greer : I was suffering greatly from migraines and every day, like clockwork, I had to put my head down on the desk and turn off all the lights and I was nauseous and I couldn't account for why. It didn't make any sense. I had run into a colleague who told me, Hey, it sounds like you have Papilledema Kind of similar. I had it, so why don't you call the eye doctor and go in. So I called the eye doctor and I went in. He told me, Stop playing Doctor Google. Well, I'm not playing Dr. Google. My symptoms actually line up quite spot on. And he looked into my eyes and he was stunned into silence and he said, OK, hold on. He had me wait for a second and he said, Hey, I have this eye MRI machine in the back room. You've never used it before, but I need you to go back there and I need you to follow the prompts. It took scans of my eye. And it printed out these very interesting images and results. And he told me I needed to go to the ER right away. From his results and what he could see, I would be blind in about 2 weeks if I did not go. And the suspicion of the papilloedema was actually very correct. And also what was highly likely is that I had intracranial hypertension. Essentially, I had a buildup of so much pressure and fluid. That it was crushing my optical nerves. They couldn't find the reason or the initial cause and trigger for why. That was postpartum, about 18 months postpartum from having my son. He was like, If you lose about 20 pounds, it'll go away. I went to the ER. Berkeley Medical Center did not have the tools and resources in their interventional radiology department that I needed. They tried 6 times and failed. To do the spinal tap that I needed to alleviate the pressure. They had to call out to Winchester Medical, which is about 30, 35 minutes south of here, and I did have to wait and it was extremely painful to have to wait. By the time I got to Winchester Medical for that appointment, I ended up having 44 pounds of pressure built up with the cerebrospinal fluid on my brain that it was literally destroying my optical nerves. And that is why having access to medical care is so necessary. It is so needed. If he didn't have that eye MRI machine, I would be blind right now.
