Just got the all clear from the neurologist

I am so relieved. Just got the all clear from the neurologist, there is nothing wrong with my brain. The little deviation visible in the left temporal lobe, is nothing to worry about. Yay! :D

This all means that we still don’t know what caused the blackout in the first place. The neurologist concludes that it was an one time event. To make sure that he didn’t miss something, he asked two other specialists to check the MRI scan results.

Thanks for all the support in the past couple of weeks, I really appreciate it.

Nothing critical found in my brain. Phew!

The long wait for MRI results is over, sort of. The neurologist called me to inform that there is nothing critical wrong with my brain. There is a little deviation visible in the left temporal lobe. It has probably been there for all my life and it is not sure if that caused my blackout.

In an attempt to identify what the deviation exactly is, the neurologist sent the MRI images to another specialist. Tomorrow I’m going to schedule an appointment with the neurologist to talk about all the results and I hope we will get the all clear then.

All in all, nothing critical found in my brain. There is no indication that there is anything wrong that will bite me in the butt sooner or later. Very happy about that. :)

Only thing is, we have to wait a few days more for the final conclusion. And if there is one thing that I’m starting to hate, it’s the waiting…

UPDATE: Appointment with neurologist is scheduled for next friday. Friday the 13th.. May that become my lucky date.

2011 in review

All WordPress.com powered blogs got a nice gift at the end of 2011. My blog doesn’t come with impressive numbers, but the annual report is pretty cool:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,200 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 20 trips to carry that many people.

Check out the full annual report of my blog.

And now the wait for MRI results starts…

Yesterday I had my MRI scan, after blacking out and an inconclusive EEG recording. For everyone who never had a MRI scan: It is one crazy ride…

Chris Valleskey mentioned on Twitter that I should think of the loud noises as dubstep, which doesn’t even come close in reality. The beat is there, the strange noises are there, but dubstep never comes close to the volume of the MRI scanning machine.

But now we have to wait for January 4 to get the results. This is three weeks earlier than the original schedule, but still it’s a long wait. But I’m looking at it on the positive side of things, since it could be nothing and just an one time black out after all.

So, I blacked out for 4 hours…

A few days ago I had to take the train back home, as always. That’s where it goes black.

My memory is back, about 4 hours later, at a train station where I wasn’t supposed to be, in the direct opposite direction of my hometown. I’m sure I haven’t been sleeping – I didn’t ‘wake up’ when my memory came back and I was already outside of the train.

And that, scares the crap out of me. I don’t know what I did, who was with me or what happend around me. Why did I end up at that other train station? And why did I black out? It’s a long list of questions, that will never be answered.

In the train back home, three train conductors thought of an epileptic seizure after hearing what had happened to me. I still didn’t have a clue and the only thing I could think of was getting home, back to my girlfriend who was terribly worried.

The doc checked me up the next day, who couldn’t pinpoint the problem. It didn’t give me a headache, no troubles at all getting up after just two hours of sleep. It is like the world continued spinning and my brain stopped recording it for 4 hours. To make sure it’s nothing too serious, I’m having an EEG recording soon.

UPDATE: EEG recording is scheduled for tomorrow, Tuesday December 6th. Hope I’ll have some good news then…

Back at WordPress.com

The same blog, the same content. Add a new domain name, merge in my moblog and move it all to WordPress.com. That in under two hours of work, done!

Why I moved my blogs here? Because it works, it works fast and with my personal blog, I never come anywhere near the WordPress.com limitations.

Right next to all the success stories of people moving away from WordPress.com to a self hosted install, here’s one from someone who moved back.

Exciting new career adventure

Over the last three years, my life gradually changed from full time student, to full time freelance developer, with a couple of steps in between. Just when I totally gave up on school, decided to focus on my freelance work, the next big challenge entered the room.

Starting next month, I’m joining the Haboes team as their new lead PHP developer.

Haboes is changing it’s strategy to fully focus on WordPress development and we – yes, I already refer to Haboes as ‘we’ – already have some exciting WordPress projects coming.

Dutch WordPress community

Because Haboes is currently focussing on the Dutch WordPress market, I am going to set my goals to the Dutch market too. I’m not going to drop all my international activities – I really, really, really want to visit WordCamp San Francisco next year and I’m going to continue this WordPress blog in English too.

But on the other hand, I’m going to focus on the Dutch WordPress users too, starting with my Twitter account. More and more tweets will be posted in Dutch, so they might be a little less interesting for my international followers. So feel free to hop on the RSS-feed of this blog, to stay tuned of everything I’m currently doing related to WordPress.

Language barrier in social media

If there was a way to give just my English tweets to my international followers, I’d do that right away. But there isn’t, right now.

I’m pretty sure my English tweets will continue to come in, so if you don’t mind the occasional Dutch tweet, feel free to follow me as @CoenJacobs on Twitter!