Meanwhile Jane’s had some cardiac problems, and sensibly went to a cardiologist, which turned up some irregularities. A pill seemed to solve most of it. But they ran a hospital test Thursday—which is where our time has gone, an angiogram, which she reports as not really too bad except for the 4 hours you have to lie flat afterward. Remember the pt for the back and hip issues. Lying flat is not what she does best.
Meanwhile her roommate brought a service dog because nobody told her not to, and the poor guy was only a month into service, and had to be left with us—but he was a gentleman and laid down and simply guarded the lady’s walker while she was having her procedure. Bad news is, I’m allergic to dogs, and I was getting a sore throat, but hey, it’s not their fault. And a pill would solve my sore throat, but not her need for the dog. So I wish pup and owner well.
Anyway, Jane got a sterling clean bill on what our cardiologist calls ‘the plumbing,’ so now we go after the electrical system, and Jane has an appointment next week with an electrical cardiologist, just to keep up on things. Good to do, good to have handled. There’s a thing they can do called ‘ablation’ or burn-off, if you have a patch of naughty cells that won’t respond to a pill, but the way Jane’s situation improved so fast on a few doses, likely that’s going to be enough. Hope so.
Women are under-diagnosed with cardiac issues: if anything’s wonky with your pulse or shortness of breath, etc, gals, get checked. Stress test turned up a rapid beat that made the angiogram a good idea, but we think now it’s an electrical thing that can be dealt with.
Good to hear. The tests are good – in the old days people would just die.
Have a nice spring.
Jonathan up here in New Hampshire
Glad that Jane is fit as the proverbial fiddle.
Happy Easter to all — the ham is in the oven and relatives are coming to help consume it.
Lying flat for four hours, I hope she had something to read or audio to listen to.
Good to hear she’s doing OK. Here’s hoping other tests turn out well and all this reveals whatever is going on; hopefully mild and amenable to treatment. We want Jane around a good long time.
To the lady and her service dog, aww, good dog. It can’t be easy taking care of a new hewmon with lots of other hewmons and busy stuff and beeping things all around. Sympathy to the heroic dog for being generally doggy and a good sport. Hope things go well for them both.
Heh, CJ, bless you for your allergies. — I have very fond old memories of the mama dog I grew up with, a sweet-natured dog, but the last dog regularly in my life. I’ve always had cats since then. She was really my mom’s dog. My goodness, that’s been a long time ago.
Hurray for the wedding of Jane’s friends from the resin-kids interest.
Robbie is still (I hope) in storage, along with my still-new-yet-not-so-new-now guitar and my digital camera and two cowboy hats. Among other things. Oh, I want that stuff out of storage where I can go through it and get it sorted. I am very hopeful that the rent house will be doable.
That font idea I was drafting, between Art Nouveau and Space Age, veered more towards the space and less toward the wonderfully quirky arts and crafts movement. I wasn’t satisfied with the look. So I will be doing more doodling to arrive at what I want, and meanwhile, the draft is likely to get done along the way, now that I have it close to what I want. It’s still morphing some. That’s been odd, to start with an idea that I thought was pretty solid, then have it not shape up to what I wanted, then morph all around without a clear idea, before settling again. Yet it still is likely to be tweaked a bit before I am happy with where the draft is going. So the doodling to get what I was going for originally, I hope will yield better results. The idea still seems workable, and a good one.
At least my creativity is going better, sparked by the hopeful news, something to strive for. Having to remind myself to keep at it. The one thing about working for oneself and living by oneself is, creativity does not function too well in a vacuum. Being too alone is not good for people, even if one has loner / hermit tendencies like I do. I like people, I just haven’t found the ones for me, for any short-term or long-term roommate relationship, or for a partner / boyfriend / spouse. Still a source of frustration for me. Maybe it’ll change after all. :-/
Happy Easter, everyone. — Doing OK here. Life isn’t ideal, but it’s so much better than it could be.
It came up with my prior doc, and he told me they don’t do the ablation so much these days.
Sounds like it’s been stressful, worrisome times the past few weeks for the two of you and still some worry/holding your breath the next few. Hope you had a relaxing day today and were out in your garden!
Women are very typically underdiagnosed — largely because most heart research was done on men (most congressmen are men, and they see to the allocation of medical research funding) and women women frequently don’t have the “classic” heart attack symptoms men have, — assuming they have any symptoms at all, which they often don’t. I had a 60-70% blockage in my left main coronary artery (“the widowmaker”) that took two stents to bridge, and I never had any symptoms until that day at the cancer center. Then had the cardiologist tell me — with a perfectly straight face — that usually the first symptom of a heart attack is death!
It is excellent that Jane’s “plumbing” is clear. There are all sorts of pacemakers, ICD’s and other such gizmos as well as ablation, that they can use to treat electrical disturbances. It’s a good thing it was caught as electrical disturbances in the heart can mean not just rhythm disturbances, but the opportunity for clots to form. Even better if she can be treated with drugs rather than “intervention.” Will think good thoughts and send all good vibes that they figure out what’s going on and put a stop to it tout de suite.
After I had scarlet fever at the ripe old age of 21, I would pretty routinely throw PVC’s (premature ventricular contractions — where your heart “skips a beat”) and did so for 40+ years — which is technically a rhythm disturbance, but a very benign one. However, since I had the stents placed and was put on metoprolol, I stopped having them. They’ve got a lot of great drugs including that one that can help. Hopefully they can get Jane sorted and everybody can get back to normal —
And, of course, my magpie brain comes up with the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy quote, “We are now cruising at a level of two to the power of twenty-five thousand to one against and falling, and we will be restoring normality just as soon as we are sure what is normal anyway.”
Weird Things Department: Yesterday evening, there was a pair of kid’s socks outside my door. There was no kid in them, however. Nor any of the other things in the old Dr. Seuss book. (Oh my, I’ve discovered I’ve forgotten most of that. Eegad.) I am not sure what to think of this, but I think I would’ve been more concerned if there was a kid in them, versus the socks alone. This afternoon, they are still there. I moved them outside my space, where hopefully, they will be more obvious, and will be picked up by the owner or some relative. Or by the grounds maintenance crew in the morning. You just never know.
Will have to call friends, who didn’t show up from Friday to now.
Naturally thought of that expression, “(something I experienced) knocked my socks off.”
Maybe now we know what happens to the socks when somebody has that happen to them?
The thing that came to my mind as well was Dr. Seuss’ “Pale green pants with nobody inside!”
I find I need that Dr. Seuss book, and I wonder how readable it and the illustrations are on Amazon Kindle. I will find out.
The socks disappeared. I did not see them walk off, nor did I see them vanish into that vortex where the missing socks go when in the dryer. Nor did I see any house-elves about. I would not mind a house-elf for company, though I do not know how house-elves and cats get along. I would suppose rather well, since both prefer things neat. Hmm, and now my brain says I should look up the difference, if any, between brownies and (friendly / good) hobs. Something in my memory says hobs are the good kind and hobgoblins are the bad kind, but I see I should clear that up. I guess it’s been too long since I’ve had a good medieval fantasy / fairy tale.
Yesterday, a prosthetic leg was found in Sonoma, California. The leg has been reunited with its owner. The skydiver promises to use a tether in the future, as for skis or surfboards, but won’t stop jumping out of perfectly good aircraft.
Talk about footloose!
Ho, that was bad!
Was that “taking a flying leap” ? Or perhaps it was a Quondam Leap?
Hoo-ee, wouldn’t that be a heckuva time for a Quantum Leap, right in the middle of a skydive? Yee-ow!
De Quondam Altissimus Saltus!
I am only guessing that’s close to the Latin for, “From whence highest leap.” —
De ~ from/of; Quondam ~ that’s probably “to when, to whence” rather than “from when, whence”; Altissimus ~ the highest, the most high; Saltus ~ a/the jump or leap; taking both the adjective and noun as masculine; — I don’t know what the Latin for “where, to where, from where” would be, as Spanish and French and Italian only come somewhat close to each other: donde, d’où, dov’è, and I’m not sure of the Italian form, due to limited exposure.
Thank you for letting us know. Sending lots of prayers and good thoughts to both of you.