I knew the day was coming but it came soon than later. Yep, at the cardiologist's office yesterday morning, I was the oldest patient in the waiting room. The shock of it and the fact there were merely three of us waiting for appointments almost did me in. Then, when I was led back to a waiting room five minutes before my appointment time I'm wondering if they are just trying to kill me. To tell you the truth when I pulled up to the valet parking yesterday, there were barely any cars waiting and the usual hoard of people waiting for their cars or to be picked up wouldn't have added up to even a small crowd. The normal look always reminds me of what the pool of Bethesda in John 5-crowds of sick people, blind, lame or paralyzed on the porches- would look like in modern time. The only usual thing about the scene were the looks on people's faces. Tired, weary, exasperated, mad, depressed, and the few who actually enjoy disease and being sick. You can tell how they dictate and control the people helping them. I can pick them out at twenty paces.
I have a heart journal I keep, not a decorative heart but more like a heart journey journal. Before most appointments I write what I think the appointment will be like, what if any new news. I can happily report that I have more good news in that journal than I have bad. Even in the hardest and darkest days of this journey, I've had hope and faith in the Great Physician. The verse I hold onto is Psalm 73:26. I kind of knew that yesterday's appointment wasn't going to be the easy breezy kind. I am not prone to gloom and doom but I almost packed a little bag to leave here at the house for Roy to bring later if need be. I imagined the conversation we would have on what I needed him to bring to me which would mainly be me saying stuff like," no the blue one. The bright blue one. It's in the second drawer...in the dresser. No that's the chest of drawers. Oh and bring me that little Bible I've been reading out of. No, the one that looks like the Bible I carry on Sundays only it's smaller...no, it's not the pink one. It's brown and has a little floral design on it. It should be on the table by the small couch in our bedroom...no that is my devotion book, Jesus Calling. Are you moving things around?" I knew before they did the EKG that I was in serious A-Fib. You don't have to be a genius or even a graduate of med school to know that. Since I have always been a watcher and lover of Looney Tune cartoons, I imagined that my heart looked like it was jumping out of my chest three or four feet big time. Of course I know it didn't look that way. When the heart is beating so hard and so fast, you wear out quickly. You get this heart cough and you want to sleep. Only you can't sleep because your heart beat keeps you awake, well that is until it slows down a bit and you have that fleeting thought, oh did I just die? Then you open your eyes and see you are tucked in your bed with your loving snoring husband beside you. Back to the Dr office, so they do several EKGs on me and each time the nurse says, oh, this doesn't look good. After all the vitals and such the Dr comes in and he had a resident training with him. He knows I like the Baylor Bears and he introduced her to me with, oh she is a Baylor Bear...I did sic em bears! Then we had a little Baylor love fest until the Dr broke it up. He spent a lot of time with me discussing my options and decisions that I am going to have to make. First thing though is getting my heart back into rhythm. So I go in next week to have my second Chaka Khan in two years. Maybe I should name this cardioversion Shaka Zulu. I am back on meds that eat my lunch and steal my bus money. Then I will need to decide when to schedule surgery to fix all this either in the fall or at the beginning of next year. I am leaning toward next year. Suddenly I am all Scarlet O'Hara by saying, well, we will think about that tomorrow., after all tomorrow is another day. I asked him about going to Israel and Rome and he's all for the trip. He's thinking after the trip would be best to have surgery and he gave me a name of a Dr in Israel that he trained and thinks highly of if I had any problems. The Dr kind of scared me while going over everything with the surgery, you know with all the complications and risks but he assured me he has never lost a patient doing the procedure and he is on the advisory board that looks into these things when a patient dies.
At least this time when I called Roy to tell him everything he didn't begin with all the questions of do you have a medical power of attorney? See it here
After the appointment, I headed over to the Galleria area because I had a couple of errands to run and because I was trying to stay away from home because the maid was there cleaning. I did grab a quick Nord lunch. When I got home Buddy and I laid low while Chris finished up. Roy brought home Chinese for dinner and when I went to sleep last night, there was still that lurching and sloshing going on in my chest, but not so dramatically. It was the first night in two weeks it didn't take me two hours to go to sleep. Oh and when I left the Dr office yesterday, it was jam packed with old people, older people than me. Ah yes, the medical world was back to normal.
1 comment:
Praying for our Shaka Zulu next week!
Post a Comment