It's Just Today

This is the article I mentioned yesterday; it is very much worth reading. It's not from some oddball source, either; it's in The New York Times. (If it asks you for a username/password, you can register -- it's free -- or use library/library.)

I just posted another entry, a rant of sorts triggered by last night's presidential debate. But I thought I'd write a bit about real life as well. Not that it's all that exciting.

I really don't feel great, and haven't all summer. I won't go into the details, which are totally TMI, but some of it is the same old stuff, and some of it is the same less-old stuff, like my back hurting (I'm going to the chiropractor, like a good girl), and I think I'm starting to nervous up over next week's stress test. Even so, I'm pretty well convinced that there's nothing wrong with my heart. I'm thinking it's probably respiratory, since I can't walk up my basement steps without huffing and puffing. I'm going on Tuesday, and I figure a cardiologist can watch me take the test and will know at one point if he has to say "Hey lady, you need a pulmonologist," and there's one in the same office there, too. And then I'll stop by the gastro man on my way out. I've been taking the meds he gave me back in April, which are supposed to make me drowsy (which is why I don't take them more), but I need to go another day or two to see if there's improvement.

On another front, Boo the cat is doing pretty well, but let me tell you: he stinks to high heaven. He can no longer clean himself properly, and he squirms away if we try to clean him so we can only get a little section at a time. I'm reluctant to grab him and hold him tight because he probably weighs only four pounds at this point, maybe a bit more, and is all bones, so I'm literally afraid that I'll break him. He never sits or sleeps on the actual furniture, because everything is covered with towels, which I change all day, as necessary, but the smell is starting to get to me a bit. Poor little guy, it can't be nice for him, either. Gotta try again when he wakes up.

So I did cut down my estrogen, starting Saturday, and I think that's accounting for some of the tension I'm feeling, since there's no real reason for it. I've been sleeping okay so far, but I guess that could change. It takes forever for me to wake up in the morning, and I'm dragging all day long. I did manage to straighten up the living room today and make a trip to recycling, but actually clean? I'll think about it tomorrow, Scarlet.

I thought I had more to write, but my head is totally not clear. Maybe a bit later, if I can think straight.

UPDATE: Lest you think I am ignoring my baby, as soon as I posted, I gave him a nice warm sponge-bath with a soft washcloth, trimmed off a lot of yucky fur places, and washed him all over with nice-smelling cat wipes and gave him a good combing. Part of his problem is that he loves to be groomed so much that he writhes in pleasure and won't hold still, so everyplace is hard to reach. And I changed the towels again, too.

WATCHING DR. PHIL :: ENTRY #1533

Changed My Mind

Feeling a little better, released a little tension, which is always good for the back.

I'll start with yesterday. Or maybe a bit of Saturday night. Or ...

I've had trouble with my back since ... okay, 1974, but it's really been much better for the last few years. I get occasional backaches, like normal backaches, which is what I seemed to have Saturday night, a little cramp here, a little muscle strain there. No big deal, and it was the same Sunday morning, when I went for my pedicure with the Sibs. I came home and sat at my desk chair for a while, as I do, waiting for the toes to be nice and dry, and then when I got up ... I couldn't.

So my back just got worse as the day wore on, going into spasm. I used heat, I took advil, I stretched myself out flat on the floor for awhile. I'm a little better today, not spasming, as such, but uncomfortable.

Needless to say, I did not take a walk today, although I went briefly to the mall with K in the afternoon, and it was hard walking around there. But I felt that walking around anywhere would be better for my back than sitting in a chair all day, and it was. But I'm tired now.

I finally talked to the Colleague, who was away herself last week, and she gave me some very good input on our upcoming trip. I discussed it with the Hubs when he got home, who is being so pleasant and flexible and easy-going about this whole trip that honestly, I have no idea who he is. So now I have recommendations for two hotels, and although I'm going to call tomorrow, I doubt that we can get either one of them. Although this week is the actual anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, so all the big hoopla there is going on now, it's a place that people go when they're on vacation, and most people plan more than two weeks ahead of time. I have a third place as a back-up and I know they have rooms (I checked online), so I guess we'll have a place to go. (My first choice had nothing online and said to call the hotel; the second choice doesn't offer online reservations, so I have to call.)

Am I looking forward to the trip? Hmm. Yes and no. If I'm going anyplace (other than DisneyWorld), I'm glad we're going here; I did want to make this trip and see this stuff, and for a while. Am I looking forward to the disruption of being away from home, and packing, and finding suitable food for the Hubs away from home? Not so much. That part just sounds stressful to me. I really am a homebody. I like the places I go to, the rare times I go, but I'm not so good with change, or disruption.

When K and I were in England, for example, four years ago, I lived a dream: I saw the Globe Theatre. It was amazing to be there in every possible way; it could only have been better if we saw an actual play, but it was winter and not their season. It made me very happy. Yet back in the hotel one night, when K had gone out and met some friends who were studying in London, I got very freaked out about being in a hotel and not being home and how out-of-sync with everything I was, and felt. A little bit of an almost-panic attack. It's as if the only place I can go and feel at ease is DisneyWorld. Really, I belong there. I should live there, right on Main Street.

So tomorrow I try for reservations. R is getting out of work early -- her office is closing early for the holiday on Wednesday, nice of them -- so she'll be here sometime in the afternoon, and then for dinner, and then will sleep over on the couch so that her father can get her to the airport nice and early Wednesday morning.

I made an appointment for a consultation with the cardiologist for next week. It seems that I cannot take a standard stress-test, since I can't walk on an incline for more than a minute or two and that's what the test is, so it was decided that I should meet with him first and he'll decide what alternate test I need, and if in fact I need it. I don't have symptoms, really, just indicators, but if I'm getting blocked arteries now, I'd like to know it now and not find out in ten years in an emergency room.

Okay. Now I'm going to lie down.

WATCHING RAYMOND :: ENTRY #1513

They'll All Be Sorry When I'm Gone

[copied from dland]

(I'm not going anywhere.)

I'm all into self-pity mode here, and the chest pain just keeps making me think that when I have my heart attack next week (or at whatever time is convenient for me), then all the morons where I work will realize that they have done me wrong and will feel remorse and will apologize to me when I come back to work all healthy-like.

Yeah.

Did I even mention this part of the story yesterday? (I'm writing at work, so I can't check my diary to see what I wrote.) At the stupid faculty meeting, we were working in departmental groups -- the SCM and I were dumped in with another department -- and the new VP strolled by and I mentioned that our "group" answers might make more sense if the SCM and I submitted as our own group. She said no, we should be part of the larger group, even though I pointed out that we don't teach the same thing or in the same way. Anyway, I told her, the chairman of the project for our group was sitting at the other end of the table in a very noisy room, and I couldn't hear anything he said, so I didn't expect to be able to participate much.

And as she breezed off to monitor the next table, she gave me this advice: "Talk louder!"

I almost exploded. And I replied, in the loudest voice I could muster: "I CAN TALK LOUD. I'M DEAF!"

The sad truth is, if I even have a heart attack, when I come back to school, this clueless babe will say to me, if she says anything, Oh, were you out?

Okay, here's news from the heart attack front.

I don't mean to alarm anyone, because I'm not really alarmed or changing my life or even going to see a doctor, but I do think it could be possible that I am having a small heart attack, or at least some sort of heart incident. I feel fine except for this intermittent chest pain, which is not that bad, it's just there. It almost feels like constant heartburn, but nothing is making it go away. (Although it does come and go.) It's also possible that there's some connection to why I'm so tired and lethargic all the time.

I am not telling anyone but you. Anyone in my 3D world would make me go to the doctor, or worse, the hospital, and I am not doing that. Yet. For one, I am fully functional, and only have this little pain and it is not getting in the way of anything I'm doing or need to do. (I'm still walking for 15 - 20 minutes around the school in the morning; I just don't go up any steps.) For another ... okay, here it is. K is finally getting to go away this weekend. She's planned a much, much better trip to DC than the one that was canceled two weeks ago because of the snow. She's going Thursday to Monday, staying in a hotel (one of her friends is staying with her for a night or two), and seeing way more of her DC friends than she would have last time. And the weather should be beautiful. And she's not taking the train either way in the dark, which means I feel comfortable with her driving herself back and forth from the station here in NJ and I don't have to drop her off or pick her up. And she totally needs this vacation and I am totally paying for it, which is another whole issue, but I want her to have this. And if I have a damn heart attack, she won't go, or will go and have a terrible time, or will go and have to come back early.

If this all hasn't gone away by next week, I'll go to the doctor. Promise. I'm sure it's all a figment of my imagination anyway. Here, I made a list:

1. I have stopped smoking.
2. My diet is

   1. low fat
   
   
   2. low calorie
   
   
   3. low sodium
   
   
   4. high fiber
   
   
   5. whole grain
   
   
   6. full of fruit and vegetables

3. I am losing weight.
4. I have lowered my cholesterol, and take cholesterol meds.
5. I take two blood pressure meds.
6. I walk 15 - 20 minutes 5 or 6 days a week.
7. I have gastric reflux but take meds for it.

So there you go. No heart attacks for me, right? Despite the specters of my father and three of my grandparents hovering around me, like the final dueling scene in The Goblet of Fire? But they were all much older before they had their heart attacks and/or strokes, in their 60s at least, and one in her 80s. So we're settled. No heart attacks for me. Not yet, anyway.

It's funny, isn't it; if I didn't have you all to vent to, I'd be keeping this totally to myself and all bottled up, and who knows what effect that could have?

Hours pass.

Okay, I wrote that whole long thing at school, and I'm home now. No change in the chest pain, really, but I think I'm less committed to the having-a-heart-attack thing. Again, I will go to the doctor next week if it hasn't gone away, but whatever it is, clearly it is not getting worse, and it's mostly just annoying. The only real effect it's had on me is that I decided not to have hot dogs for dinner, because hot dog indigestion on top of whatever this is would just be too much.

I slept weirdly last night, so maybe I'm just tired. Oh, I'm always tired, you know what I mean. I'm going to lie down for a nap before I even open the new eye shadows I got in the mail.

WATCHING DR. PHIL :: ENTRY #1413