A Pacemaker?

The last time I was at my doctor's office was for an "echo" test and since I had my "regular" appointment the next day, the nurse practitioner asked if we just wanted to get it over with then so we didn't have to come back.  Oh, I jumped at that!  But, she wanted to tell us the bad news.  She was leaving and actually going to the same place where my previous doctor had gone.  I, being the cold person I am, immediately hugged her and started crying.  This woman has listened to so much of my life's complaints, tried to help me in so many ways, ways that a male doctor just doesn't seem to "get."  I'm so sorry to see her go.  She said it had been a rough year for her.  Selfishly though, I still wanted her to stay because she made my life better.  Ah, we humans are a selfish lot, aren't we?  Or is it just me?  I don't even want to know at this point.

The latest news is that I will most likely have to have a pacemaker.  Oh boy!  I don't feel like I need one, but I am so tired of fighting. By that, I mean, I have to fight to get up in the morning, and that's IF I even go to bed.  I can't sleep because the pain level is too high.  I take big pain meds regularly and then I have pain meds for "break-thru pain."  It feels like I can't do anything without my breakthru pain meds.  People in my life act as though I'm a drug addict.  I don't particularly care, except maybe once in a while.  On those occasions I want to scream at them and slap them. I seem to always want to hit people. haha  I finally figured out why I want to do that but then I'd have to add a nametag to this blog.  I have a friend that I've known since high school and this guy was there for me throughout all my boyfriend troubles, my college weekend drunken ramblings, everything, we've gotten into fights that have lasted years, we've been to each other's weddings, and I didn't even remember this but I couldn't remember why I was so mad at him at my wedding but he came to me a week or days before my wedding and told me not to marry my husband--to marry HIM!!  We've survived a lot of stuff and we still love each other (as friends!) and HE never figured out my big secret, so if HE couldn't, I don't think anyone could.  I have no idea what started me on that.  Oh, why I always want to hit people.  Wow, I digress, and how! I guess I'm just screwed up physically AND mentally! I'm just kidding around, acting like I didn't already know that! (haha)  You don't get to where I am in life and not know that! 

Wow! A Year Later....And Everything's JUST DUCKY

Ducky!  That's what I say when my husband calls me each day from work and asks me how I'm doing.  I say, "Just ducky!"  He can tell if it's a fake "ducky" or a real one.  For those of you that don't know, "ducky" is the same as "okay."  I don't know where I got that one, and no one I ever say it to has ever heard it before, so I assume I got it from my mother, who was English, and probably said it to me when I was little.  I could just have easily read it in a book, but there are a lot of things I've said in the past that I found out no one knew what the hell I was talking about and it turned out to be some quaint little expression from the UK.  I have a friend who thinks I "put on" whatever accent I have left, because I want one, but he doesn't know how embarrassed I've been when I've asked for a torch instead of a flashlight and made fun of or imitated because of the way I say things even to this day!  And this guy is someone I consider a close friend, too!

Well, back to ducky, or the lack thereof of "duckiness."  Yes, I just made up that word.  I'm probably ending sentences w/prepositions and all the things that usually make me insane.  Right now...I care not a whit about it. (ooh...I rhymed!) It's when I get all "snitty" and speak like that when I get teased about the way I speak.  It's too late, or rather early in the morning to go into the long version of this story, and why the left side of my face has been black, blue, yelllow and swollen for the last several weeks, but the timing was perfect, as usual.  Well, my face didn't get like this until after our trip to California, which was nice.  But injury numero uno to my head happened prior to the trip, in fact, I was released from the hospital after the better part of three days there, approximately three and a half hours before the surprise birthday party I'd planned for my husband's 50th birthday!  That was on a Saturday, and we were leaving for San Diego on Monday, and the doctors weren't sure I'd be able to FLY because I had a skull fracture with air inside my skull.  They said it could be quite dangerous and I could die.  I still don't know how true that was, but they ran test after test into the night Friday, and were going to start again Saturday morning but the neurologist they'd assigned to me (not my regular one), said he could see enough to see that the air, or most of it, had been absorbed into my body or my bloodstream or somewhere.  I didn't care where;  I could FLY!  So, you'd think besides falling after I got home and making a big mess out of half my face, I'd be ducky, right?  No, this is ME, after all.  The neurologist gave me a pretty extensive exam.  I knew something was off.  You know how you just know?  Sure enough, I had to have my cardiologist release me, because this time when I was admitted, my heartbeat was 37, and the docs from the emergency room were calling him telling him I needed a pacemaker the next day!  I've always had trouble with my blood pressure being low, blah, blah, this is all part of the long story for another day I mentioned above.  Anyway, my cardiologist was ready to release me.  We just needed this neurologist to release me also.  The cardiologist and I were talking and I told him that the neuro-guy told me I have another disease, to which he replies that he needs to concentrate on the situation at hand and release me.  So, all that being done, husband on the way to get me, Dr. Neuro explains to me what I have, makes me promise about 3-4 times that I WILL go to this other specialist, he actually put it the release papers so I signed something that said I WILL GO to this person FOR THIS specific thing, blah blah, and I knew by his demeanor that it was not a happy disease.  I asked if it were curable and he said, "no."  I said, "of course not."  I was supposed to rest the next day (my husband was working) and when he got home we'd pack.  We ended up without going to bed at all.  Our friends picked us up for an early flight and I tried to put it all out of my mind for the week.  But that time when I was "resting," of course I sneaked into the "computer room" (extra bedroom w/a computer in it! lol) and looked it up.  It has 6 "types" and 2 types are not so good.  With one you can have cancer.  The one that looks familiar to me, meaning it looks like it's got all my symptoms in it?  Pre-mature death.  How pre-mature?  Oh, 48-50 yrs. old.  How old am I?  Forty-eight!  I'll be forty-nine at the end of July!  We called to make the appointment but they sent papers out that have to be completed and sent back before an appointment can be made and I've done all I can.  I need my husband to fill out his portion and there's a portion that deal with genetics and I don't even know if my father will speak to me, let alone, let me come over to ask the questions (there are pages of them)  Hell, they didn't tell me when my mom died until after the funeral, so maybe Dad died too.  I never know what they're going to do.  I told my husband again and again that he can stay in denial if he wants but it does me NO GOOD.  Response? "Okay.  We'll do it on such and such day."  So what do I do?  I keep praying and saying, "I don't have this.  I don't have this.             I DON'T BLOODY WELL HAVE THIS!     

Another Night In the Hospital

I'm never sure if my life is supposed to be tragic or just a huge joke.  I know I haven't written here in ages, but I realized if I don't start getting some of my feelings OUT, I'm going to explode, which will drive the people around me away, or I'll open my eyes and realize that there aren't many people left in my life TO drive away because I've already driven them away with my whining and complaining.  I think I still have some people left who care about me, so I guess it's the exploding thing I'm more concerned about.  But back to the joke thing.  Finding humor is so difficult, so when I do, I really need to shout it from the rooftops....or in a blog or something.  My husband and I, like many people, I'm sure, watch Survivor.  We don't watch it on Thursday nights when it comes on, because that's the night that my friend and I go shopping.  We watch it on "on demand" on cable usually the next night.  Well, we were watching the one were the guy fell over and his the medics came and were checking him out and his heart-rate dropped to fifty-something while he was in the middle of a challenge and Jeff Probst said that he had never been so scared in the history of the show Survivor!  Or some such prattle.  Okay, Jeff!  I was more impressed with the show when the people had to walk quite a ways when they got to their island and the men were dropping like flies.  I found that one to be rather interesting.  But back to this show.  I said to my husband, "Gee, my heart rate's been down to 50.  Does that mean Jeff would be totally worried about me?"  My husband made some snide comment about how the guy in the show had been working hard for 15 days and my heart-beat would've been down to 50 on Day One, and we started arguing about it, not very seriously, but still.  Then, Sunday night I wasn't feeling well, I had chest pains, I was having shortness of breath, and it reminded me of an incident in the past, even though it was years & years ago, I had kinda/sorta just fallen off our bed and stopped breathing and enjoyed an ambulance ride that I don't really remember to this day and a week in Intensive Care, where they never did figure out why that had happened.  So Sunday we thought I should go to the Emergency Room, which I did, and upon arrival, guess what my heartbeat was?  Forty!  All I could think of was that I totally blew that guy on Survivor away and that Jeff Probst should be talking about ME!!  Isn't that weird?  I had a really nice male nurse who checked my records at that hospital and found that I'd been there and had a 47 before!  I didn't even remember that one.  I wasn't even thinking of the possible consequences of that.  All I could think of was that guy on Survivor.  Russell!  That's his name! I hope he's okay.  But it took 15 days, all those challenges, storms, starvation, etc. to pull him down, and I'm in my house in my p.j.'s feeling sorry for myself, and my heart-beat goes way lower than his.  Is that fair?  I don't think so.  I already have this problem with men being stronger.  I can't even believe I just said it like that.  Just so matter-of-fact.  It's been one of my deepest, darkest, secrets, yet I just said it, no problem.  Maybe this blog will be good for me.  Or maybe sitting up all night in the hospital thinking is good for me--no--scratch that one!  My poor husband was so tired.  I finally convinced him to get on the bed with me so he could get a little sleep.  As soon as the doc came in that admitted me, I just lied and said I felt better so I could go home and he had no problem with that, so off we went.  They'd done enough testing for them to know that I wasn't having a heart attack, which was what I'd been afraid of, what I'd felt like.  With that out of the way, the pain I'm left with, that they can't do anything about, I'm better off at home anyway.  So it just turned out to be just another night in the hospital.  Oh boy!  I wonder if I googled that guy from Survivor I could find out how he's doing.....who knows?  All I know is I'm sick of being sick.  But if it's my only option to stay here, then I'll take it, obviously.  I know it's up to me to make more of my life if I want more but when you feel like you-know-what 99% of the time or MORE, you just get sick and tired of it sometimes.  Especially when it feels like those people around you don't care.  They're still too afraid to be alone with you....oh my!  What will they do if something should happen??  Call 911?  Please?  Just take me out with you once or twice!

SLEEP, my pretty.....SLEEP (cue wicked witch laugh.......)

Yesterday was an interesting day.   At least psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists might call it interesting.  I call it sheer hell.  I've been having my "off" or "down" days, and now a month has passed.  A month!  I've got extremely low blood pressure and I'm on what feels like three thousand meds each day, so I've been having dizzy spells.  My throat has been bothering me and it feels like there's no part of my body that doesn't hurt.  And those aren't even the worst of it!  I've been having horrific problems with my memory.  It used to be that I would forget an incident here or there, then the episodes became a bit more frequently.  Now, I'm lucky if I can find my way home if  I go out alone!  If you're waiting for the punch line, there isn't one.  I'm serious!  I have to rely on other people to tell me what happened or what I said the day before, which is really bad, because what if someone wanted to mess with me?  They could tell me anything and I'd believe it!  Someone might tell me that I ran around the house buck-naked, or maybe that I was yelling "the sky is falling, the sky is falling!" like Chicken Little.  Or is it Chick-Fillet?  I don't know!  I didn't sleep AT ALL last night, except when my head dropped down and I hit it on the computer desk and the shelf right next to it.  I can still feel the pain from that!  I have all these things going on....things that need to be done and I can't help thinking about the movie, "The Wizard of Oz" when Dorothy & her pals were running through that field on the way to the Emerald City and then you see the wicked witch saying, "poppies....yes, poppies!"  and they all fall asleep.  Well, not the scarecrow and the tin man.  So I guess it's only Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion and Toto too!  I'm getting sleepy...yes, sleepy, so maybe I should go get in my bed and ponder these thoughts....as I drift off and fall asleep in that field.......on my way to the wonderful Emerald City.......