Gala at Midnight

I woke near midnight, finding my way into the bathroom, peed, felt my way out, and heard, 'it's near midnight, do you want to see if there are northern lights?'. I changed course, headed out of the bedroom, down the hall, looked out a window seeing only street lights. I went and opened the deck door, went out into the night air, looked up past the deck roof, turned toward the north, looked into the ski, and then noticed I was alone. I did not see anything that looked like northern lights, but did remark inwardly that there were a lot of stars so there must not be fog about at midnight. I returned to the deck door, closed it, and staggered down the hall, and the disembodied voice asked if I saw anything. 'Stars', I said. I got back in bed, and fell asleep.

The next morning, I was told about the alarm going off about 15 minutes before I got up. My bedmate could not find the alarm or the clock, fussed around while it kept sounding, finally turned on the light and turned off the alarm. I slept on only to arise like a sylph some time later to attend to physical needs and do my parody of a midnight gala in my nightgown, staggering blindly down the hall out onto the deck in the cold wind alone. The 'voice' stayed warm in bed having sent me on my way to go north in pursuit of color in the sky, which some day I will see having gone to Alaska for just that reason!

But therein lies the good parts of a marriage. It must contain humor or it is doomed, and now that I am awake and can appreciate the night moves, I can say I am laughing!

Timers

I realized yesterday that our lives are now run by timers. It was a subtle transition. Jack likes to let nap take him away in the afternoon, so he set the timer so he would wake to feed the dog at 4:45 pm. Then he would be awake for the news at 5:00 pm. I would be out in the yard weeding! He would lean out the door and say, 'it is almost 5!' So I would pack up, water what I had weeded, and come in so I could make our popcorn meal, sit and watch the news after cleaning myself up from the weeding. Then I started taking a timer, shaped like an apple, out with me. There are other timers during the day that I hear, can't remember what for, but now the cat and the dog are paying attention to the timers. The cat comes in from yard on the 4:45 timer. Time to feed her also.

When we ride our bike we have the speedometer on the bike telling us our speed, mileage, average speed, and there is a clock telling us time, so there is another silent timer! We do about 6-7 miles in 45 minutes depending on what there is to talk about or to look at on our ride. We count the deer up the hill near Washington Park, 14 yesterday. Lots of fawns in various age attire. We see small bucks with budding antlers, spikes they are called. Haven't seen any raccoons lately, but various cats, and elderly dogs, and eagles flying overhead.

As I get older, having to watch various areas of my day to day life so I won't fall, so I won't sever some part of my anatomy, so I won't run into other cars, so that I notice lights and cross walks, so that I can find the right word, remember names, birthdays, and who my relatives are remaining in my life, maybe a timer is really a great idea. Ringy Dingy!

Grannie Days

I find myself befuddling a little. I try to explain something to someone and the words get all mixed up, and eventually I finish what I am trying to say or explain. I actually think I am being more and more like my Mother. I am on alert! I need to watch what I say, where I walk, what I bump into, and what I am handling. I need to pay more attention. I am laughing more which is what my Mom and I liked to do with each other. I would read here grocery list as I saw it, and both of us would laugh because it was not what she meant at all. It was the writing I was taking literally. And I now realize that I can't bend over as easily as I used to, I have to think about it some, bend, reach, and then get back up. Weeding the garden requires getting down and then back up. Pulling requires more strength, weeds up, or myself up. Paying attention, not tripping, but being aware. Takes some doing.

But I have vowed to pay attention to others in my age group and above. Sometimes we become invisible. So I talk to old people. They are my group. I am aiming for smiles. We need to stick together. I will open a door or acknowledge their presence. In the grocery store you can see some of us looking downcast, and that is not good. Say hello. Smile. It does not take much, and I will bee older one of these days and may be confused and need help. Pass it on!

Back To My Childhood

For some reason I thought about living on Queen Anne Hill in Seattle, going to grade school, and having two older brothers to make my life fascinating. My brothers had paper routes and also had meetings in our garage, in the attic space with the other paper route boys. I would climb on the roof with my next door neighbor and stomp around making as much noise as I could to annoy them. They would come streaming out and try to catch us, but we were fast, and had a head start using back yards to escape.

My oldest brother , seven years older than I was, sometimes took me on his route when he made collections. He showed me the trees that grew nuts, different kinds. And then the house that had the zombie living in it. He talked this up a lot, and finally I went to the door with him, and sure enough a zombie would come to the door. He just shuffled, his face was long and dreary looking, and he talked like he had something in his mouth getting in the way. Now that I look back on this I wonder if he didn't have a neurological disease or something like multiple sclerosis, or Parkinsons, which was probably true, but my brother worked it to scare me. The chestnuts really interested me, because there were two kinds. The horse chestnuts I had collected all my life from the trees in front of our house. Trees that were huge. But there were the kind you could roast and eat growing near the zombies house and we would collect them also.

Those days of being young, being teased and teasing, riding bikes recklessly, playing hide and seek, doing games like being dectectives shadowing people, playing cars, dolls, growing up without even paying any attentions to anything much, but looking back and realizing that history went on about you anyway. There was the polio epidemic, having to stay away from crowds, and no swimming in the lake or at pools. There was the War, and Dad going off to the South Pacific. There were Japanese where we lived who just disappeared. There was an awful lot of eating fish as it was cheap and available in Seattle. I was aware of things happening, and could be afraid in my mind, but I also was mostly on my own. My Mother had depression and would be in bed for days. We had a woman who came in to help out, Maud, and I turned to her mostly because Mom was just not there. Funny, when I talk to my brothers, they had not noticed. I sure did.

The Perfect Cascade of Events

Chest pains again, but this time I am up on the ski hill. I decide to go into the local Orthoedic Surgeon's office, he being a friend, close, and he really takes on anything. He has a young intern who is on rotation and she specializes in Family Medicine. I interrupted their lunch, but they took me on, did an EKG, checked all my vital signs, and hunted down another 2 year old EKG to look for changes. They decided they didn't see any changes, but wanted to do a fasting blood test. OK, I will come in the next day for that, and then we shall see.

Did the blood letting, which was my third in about 5 days. I am following up another problem caused by statins. So the next morning after getting the results, the PA who works in the office when the surgeon is doing surgery, spent over 15 minutes talking to me about his idea of what I should do, always telling me that he cannot make up my mind for me, that I had the choice and should do what I decided I should do. There was a blizzard outside. I got off the phone and said he thinks I should go to the ER. My husband said, 'lets go!' It took 30 minutesto get there, and when we got just past town, there was blue sky. At the ER, they whipped me into the exam room, hooked me up to monitors, jammed a IV line into my hand with great pain, and got the attending Dr. They asked all sorts of questions, and kept asking me if I had ever had a heart attack. Neither my husband or I had eaten, it being before noon, and my husband wandered in and out, alternating looking for a snack machine and checking on me. The Attending called a cardiologist in the next town, an hour away and they decided to send me in an ambulance to the hospital there and ICU for overnight monitoring.

By this time pain was just sort of a knot in my chest and I was feeling relieved. So since there was blizzard back home, my husband just decided to come on down to the next town after me, and get a motel. I left in the ambulance with a competent EMS who is studying to become a rescue medic in the Dept. of Defense. He monitored all my signs and I rocked back and forth. Somewhere in all that, perhaps it was the BP collar, I ended up with a sore right shoulder.

I could see blue sky through the window, and thought that things would be all right. We got to the hospital and I was taken right up to the ICU, plumped into bed and rewired, and more questions. My nurse was a tall blond with nice boobs, and a caring manner. Later I would find out she was my cardiologists partner. Handy! She treated me well, and kept me in the loop and explained things to me. They woke me regularly during the night for BP check, but I slept like a log! My night nurse informed me my rhythms were all over the chart: flutters, A Fib, PVC's, missed beats, extra beats, and on!

In the AM the tech nurse from the radiology lab. came to shoot me up with radiological material so they could see my heart in rest and after exercise. The material went into my IV line, but I felt it. After she left I noticed my hand swelling. I called for the nurse and she slid in, being a very beautiful lanquid type, and I asked if 'my hand should look like this?' 'Oh, no, I will have to change that! She came back with the things to start another IV and sais she called the tech and that the tech was sure she had pushed good enough to get the leathal stuff in my IV. Then I waited 45 minutes for them to come and get me for pictures to be taken, which means you lay under this claustrophobic machine that clicks and whirrs, and it made me close my eyes so I wouldn't be disturbed. Then back to my room to wait another 30 minutes and then in for the real torture, treadmills work! That is when they would know if I was in an active event or not.

Down I went, and then they hooked me up to monitors, a BP cuff on my arm, a cardiology Dr. in attendence as well as the treadmill tech, and the radiologic med. pusher. You start at a pretty good walk and elevated, then another level, little faster, a little more elevated, and then one more before the tech says, the next one you will be jogging so remember to tell us if you think you minght have one more minute left before you feel like you are done. Oh right! I had to get my exercise hear t rate up to 126 or over, and then they push the med, and then I have to keep it up for another minute! Whee! I did it, but it was close. I had a picture straight ahead of me with big horn sheep probably in the Canadian rockies. I held their eyes with mine, and I made it to where they could call it a successful test. Wow, I felt it, but I came down pretty fast to almost fast normal with the heart rate.

The final note in the results said I had 'extraordinarily high cardivascular fitness for a woman her age.' So take that you Republicans! I had no current event occurring, but I had had a heart attack somewhere along the way. By the results, they could not tell when it could have happened, and I didn't recognise anything, but I am all right!

I do have a lot of irregular rhythm, flutters, missed beats, extra beats, and because of that I will have to take a blood thinning med. I could throw a clot into my brain or somewhere, and then I would die. I am not ready yet! I am going to keep on trucking!

So the perfect cascade was the people I was involved with in this cardiac trip. It all fell into place, and worked for a positive outcome for me. Sometimes you are just lucky I guess, and now I continue down the path I was taking, to get to see my grandson get married and meet my first great grand baby girl! I feel the power of something out there, and it is good. Namaste

Blood Tests!

Over the past three days, I have had 4 vials of blood drawn. We are trying to find out what is going on with this old lady. Chest pains and liver tests running high. It is sort of like a perfect storm. I am getting ready for a trip, and it seems like my body says, 'wait a minute, was I consulted?' So I wait and wonder what it will all add up to be for the next phase of my life.

We have been having very cold weather, and that started my asthma acting up, breathing cold air, and I got to coughing, my chest feel tight, and then the sharp pains. Actually I wrote about the first manifestation with the statins, and now this is the next manifestation, sharp chest pains, being out of breath, tired, and just not feeling very good. Hey, I am working at trying to keep this body functioning. But age is piling up, the years being added. We will just have to see!

Coming Back

I haven't been on this for some time. Guess it is time to come back with something, anything to catch up! Been having lots of snow where we live, and more today. It is the kind that you really can't see very well if you are out in it, whiteout! Well, that is if you are elderly and at last facing up to your mortality!

My history goes from feeling really great in the summer, riding my road bike, blood tests all within normal range to feeling like I am going to explode. From July= good, to November= bad, and wondering what could have changed things so rapidly. I had been on my third full time statin to try and help lower my cholesterol, more importantly my triglycerides which seems to be genetic in my family as being high, and I was also having severe muscle pains in my thighs, knees, and groin area, and beyond. Well, it felt severe to me. It caused me to go and try to find out what was going on in my left knee! After the physiotherapy, and MRI, nothing was wrong but bone on bone and nothing to fix. So I tried to think of what I could do other than surgery which I don't want to do. Then at Thanksgiving gathering, I bloated up, gained about 6 lbs, was very uncomfortable, didn't want to eat much and decided I needed attention. I also had a tender hamstring on the same leg as the knee problem, and after I had intensive massage, limped a bit, swore I was getting tired of all of this, I stopped the statin. I had suspected maybe the statins were doing a number on my muscles. I went to see the local GP, had a blood test, and sure enough the AST (muscle damage revealing test) was elevated as was BUN (kidney function). Felt apprehensive about this. And now after two months, a liver etc. ultrasound, and worrying about hepatitis event, am feeling a bit better, although AST and ALT are still elevated. Guess I just have to heal!

But at my ascending age, I think I don't need a lot of miracle medicine that is going to make me better [NO], but maybe just a little more attention to my diet and keeping up the exercise! I know the drug companies want to sell their new wonder drugs, but maybe I should just try to keep on keeping on with attention to joive de vie! I just may be feeling a lot better than I was about three months ago!