I have Pseudotumor cerebri, or what amounts to a false brain tumor. It was diagnosed after suffering for nearly 10 years before someone figured out why I had headaches that were debilitating, dizzy spells that lasted forever, and nice shiny spots in my vision. I had to get what I THOUGHT was the flu to be diagnosed back in 1998.

The week had been stressful, I was working a job with a trainer that I didn't particularly care for (come to find out she had had a death in the family, so it wasn't all her fault she was so out of it) but the job was quite disorganized for the line I was in, and it was not preforming like I felt it should (I had worked for Marriott in college, and the college cafeteria was much cleaner than the hospital I was currently working for) I had had a root beer to drink, food didn't seem appealing, I thought I was getting sick from all the stress of working with a missing trainer...after all, how do you learn to do a job, when your teacher is NOWHERE to be found??

Well I got home and got really sick on Wednesday evening, called into work on Thursday, since I worked in a hospital, I couldn't go back without a doctors note, so Thursday I went in, they wrote me a note to go back on Monday, but on Friday I was back in the office since I could not walk across the 12 feet of living room in the house without nearly fainting, I was seriously dehydrated, but my eyes were not capable of following the doctors finger either. They sent me to an Opthalmologist, scared that something was REALLY wrong, little did we know what was coming.
We went to the Opthalmologist straight away, I could no longer bear the sight of light at all, it sent sharp pains through my head, neck and back, and just was beyond unbearable. The mean doctor shined the brightest of bright lights in the backs of my eyes, and sent me to the emergency room for a CT scan, he told my mom, that he thought I had a brain tumor. Not a good thing to hear when you are about the age your cousin was when she died of a brain tumor 9 years earlier (when the headaches Started)

After a long gruelling time in the ER, and an MRI, there was no tumor, but the morphine was barely helping the pain at all, that day, I had my second spinal tap. (the first was also when the headaches started, and while the results were the same, the symptoms of PTC are very different for Pediatric patients as I have learned since diagnosis, so it was missed)
The PA (physicians assistant) I was assigned it the ER caught it only because he had just learned about it. Thank heavens for him still being a student.
and thus started the journey to where we are now, waiting the call back from Dr. Pieper's office on what to do next.