heart

Eve of 39

~ brixton ~ Leave a comment

Tomorrow is my birthday.

Birthdays seem like a time when people confront their own mortality. I’ve had entirely too many opportunities to do this in the last year. I’m currently a week into wearing a monitor that will hopefully help us figure out what’s happening with my heart and/or pacemaker. Current best theories involve some combination of hormones, breastfeeding, exercise, and/or just no longer being pregnant bringing my heart rate below the threshold they observed nearly a year ago. I feel a little like a cyborg. The baby finds it extremely interesting.

IMG-20190109-WA0016

On the eve of my birthday, I like to reflect and set goals for the next year, if I haven’t done so already. Next year I’ll be 40. I’ve made myself an ambitious, mostly fun list. I’m trying to be intentional. Mostly I’m tired.

I’m tired because the baby has me up throughout the night, and when I try to relax into sleep, I often get paced. I’m tired because there aren’t enough hours between 4:45/5, when I get home from work, and 6/6:30, when the kids go to sleep – not enough time for snuggles and play, for making and eating and cleaning up dinner, for putting the milk in the fridge before the baby wants to nurse, for taking off my boots before the big kid wants to play a game of his making, for addressing these needs before kissing my husband. I’m tired because the cat needs to go to the vet, and the bottles need to be washed. I’m tired because I don’t know what I’m doing, but I wake up too early each morning to keep doing it.

And then on my walk to work, an orange rose in the snow – tired, but beautiful:

IMG_20190115_075326_133

Advertisement

Stray Thoughts on the Hospital and After

~ brixton ~ Leave a comment

The hospital food was worlds better than expected. I would go so far as to say that it was decent for non-hospital food, and that was while ordering from the ‘cardiac diet’, which meant no full-fat anything. However, it’s hard to eat a strictly pescatarian diet in the hospital for multiple days, which is why I’m relieved again that I define my diet as vegetarian-mostly.

In his spare time, my cardiologist designs (or at least used to design) high-end men’s shirts. Mom thought that this level of attention to detail was a good thing in a cardiologist.

My nurses were mostly wonderful. I think it helped that I wasn’t the typical cardiology/ICU patient – I was generally self sufficient, except for when they needed to connect IVs or disconnect my machines, and by the third day, I was able to do at least the machine part on my own as well. My daytime nurse the last two days was delightfully bossy. I appreciate that in a caretaker.

I had to make my first after-hours call to the cardiologist after a particularly bad coughing spell (thanks, hospital cold, for infecting my entire family) resulted in new soreness/pain around my pacemaker “pocket”. The on-call fellow was very kind and patient – and surprised me by calling back half an hour later with the offer from my cardiologist to fit me in Monday morning for a quick check of my device. All is well, but I appreciated the reassurance, and the willingness to get me in right away.

That said, I also had a major crying jag after the coughing fit but before the reassuring call back from the cardiology fellow. The pain was secondary to the fear – not of something life-threatening happening, but of going to the hospital for something that seems minor and losing another week of my life. I’ve been told this will get better.