June 25: no poetic ramblings, just daily stuff
For those of you check regularly, you are not crazy that the prior posting wasn't there on June 15th, but it is when I wrote it. Hey: three posts in one month, at least I'm trying!
In looking over the blog, as occasionally I do, it is a reminder of several things. A lot of it is a reminder of just how far I've come physically & psychologically. Thank you, readers, for giving me the incentive to continue to write, although there is less now to report--a good thing.
Still waiting for the results of the PA test, will be two weeks on Thursday. When last I checked the site they were saying three weeks for results.
Physical: it's amazing to me how much better my chest is, comparatively speaking. I no longer wake every day with pain, and am doing more yoga moves that apply pressure to the area in hopes of strengthening. My right shoulder, however, is a different story. I've mentioned it before: thought for years it was part of the pain from the thoracotomy, only started to realize in the last two years that it is it's own entity. It may well be from that surgery, all it would have taken was someone pulling my body by grabbing my arm when I was anesthetized. I don't know how I could have injured it, because it's been 'favored' ever since the first surgery where the anterior thoracotomy was on the right side. My suspicion is that it's a bone spur, possibly with adhesions. The pain is unpredictable, it occurs especially when I raise that arm up, but not every time. I can go for days without an issue, and then all of a sudden am in excruciating pain, feeling as if my arm can't be lowered without being dislodged from the socket.
So why haven't I done anything about this, especially when my current health insurance is so splendid? Because an X-ray won't be enough to see the problem, a CAT scan isn't good at showing bone pathology and I can't have an MRI with all the metal in my chest, which means even for diagnosis it will take arthroscopic. And that can't happen without me being off Coumadin for several days, using heparin as a bridge to thin my blood and keep clots from building up on my valve. Then would be the procedure, then restarting the heparin while the Coumadin level goes up again. While all that is inconvenient and time consuming, the main issue is the increased risk of stroke from all that back and forth. And that's what keeps me from pursuing it. Because what goes through my mind is: 'Is the pain bad enough that it's worth the risk of a stroke?', to which the answer is (sometimes through gritted teeth) a resounding 'No'. I should, of course, still go and have an ortho person check it out, but trust me that the outline above would be the course. Pragmatically there is a further argument for that: right now it might be something that could be fixed during the arthroscopic, as opposed to it getting worse and needing an open procedure, which would be more risky. This is the answer to the question 'why didn't they just replace the valve on the first surgery?' Because this is what it's like to live with a mechanical valve, and the younger someone is when they get one the greater the risk that this sort of debate comes up.
In other health news: I'm tired. No, really. Exhausted. Constantly. I don't even feel really rested after a full night's sleep, and my sleep is off as well. Is it maybe because I'm finally realizing how tired I am that it seems to be worse? Is there something new going on? Is my body once again hiding some mysterious horror that will come popping out? I re-read 'Monster in your body' from Nov 2009 (I think that date?) and it helps explain the terror of this possibility. My suspicion is that it's just more of an awareness, my body confirming that I need to move towards taking disability rather than the constant push to keep going. In discussing with my cardiologist, and of course blaming the multiple heart surgeries and tiny valve opening, it was a surprise to me that his reaction was to get a sleep study. I don't have sleep apnea?! What straw is this he's grasping at? I told him I would get one only to humor him, and he made it clear that he would not support disability unless a sleep problem was ruled out. No one, not once, has ever heard me snore. In any case, my sleep study is Thursday night. While I'm expecting it to be fine there is the chance that something physical is going on that's keeping me from a really good sleep. And then I think about wearing a CPAP at night--wow, what a wonderful cacophony of sounds: blowing of that and my heart clicking away. Let's not go there....
Just came across a sampler verse done by a great-great-great-great....grandmother of mine in 1797. I was looking up a reference for the sampler I have, done in 1788, which reads 'While with the needle every tint is wrought/Constant industry adds new wings to thought/And as on canvas letters are imprest/Each growing virtue springs within the breast'. Not a real rallying cry for anyone, but from a Puritanical outlook is a reason for young ladies to spend their time stitching. Well, apparently things must have gotten worse from there, because the sampler done eight years later now tells the subsequent generations: 'Be virtuous and industrious/And happiness will attend you/If you do not expect too much'. Now isn't that a lousy teaching point?! Keep your expectations really low and then you stand a better chance of being happy. Methinks they were all too stressed, and wouldn't you be with no electricity or indoor plumbing?
It's the small things that sometimes give the biggest tickle! Thanks for checking, Laurie
In looking over the blog, as occasionally I do, it is a reminder of several things. A lot of it is a reminder of just how far I've come physically & psychologically. Thank you, readers, for giving me the incentive to continue to write, although there is less now to report--a good thing.
Still waiting for the results of the PA test, will be two weeks on Thursday. When last I checked the site they were saying three weeks for results.
Physical: it's amazing to me how much better my chest is, comparatively speaking. I no longer wake every day with pain, and am doing more yoga moves that apply pressure to the area in hopes of strengthening. My right shoulder, however, is a different story. I've mentioned it before: thought for years it was part of the pain from the thoracotomy, only started to realize in the last two years that it is it's own entity. It may well be from that surgery, all it would have taken was someone pulling my body by grabbing my arm when I was anesthetized. I don't know how I could have injured it, because it's been 'favored' ever since the first surgery where the anterior thoracotomy was on the right side. My suspicion is that it's a bone spur, possibly with adhesions. The pain is unpredictable, it occurs especially when I raise that arm up, but not every time. I can go for days without an issue, and then all of a sudden am in excruciating pain, feeling as if my arm can't be lowered without being dislodged from the socket.
So why haven't I done anything about this, especially when my current health insurance is so splendid? Because an X-ray won't be enough to see the problem, a CAT scan isn't good at showing bone pathology and I can't have an MRI with all the metal in my chest, which means even for diagnosis it will take arthroscopic. And that can't happen without me being off Coumadin for several days, using heparin as a bridge to thin my blood and keep clots from building up on my valve. Then would be the procedure, then restarting the heparin while the Coumadin level goes up again. While all that is inconvenient and time consuming, the main issue is the increased risk of stroke from all that back and forth. And that's what keeps me from pursuing it. Because what goes through my mind is: 'Is the pain bad enough that it's worth the risk of a stroke?', to which the answer is (sometimes through gritted teeth) a resounding 'No'. I should, of course, still go and have an ortho person check it out, but trust me that the outline above would be the course. Pragmatically there is a further argument for that: right now it might be something that could be fixed during the arthroscopic, as opposed to it getting worse and needing an open procedure, which would be more risky. This is the answer to the question 'why didn't they just replace the valve on the first surgery?' Because this is what it's like to live with a mechanical valve, and the younger someone is when they get one the greater the risk that this sort of debate comes up.
In other health news: I'm tired. No, really. Exhausted. Constantly. I don't even feel really rested after a full night's sleep, and my sleep is off as well. Is it maybe because I'm finally realizing how tired I am that it seems to be worse? Is there something new going on? Is my body once again hiding some mysterious horror that will come popping out? I re-read 'Monster in your body' from Nov 2009 (I think that date?) and it helps explain the terror of this possibility. My suspicion is that it's just more of an awareness, my body confirming that I need to move towards taking disability rather than the constant push to keep going. In discussing with my cardiologist, and of course blaming the multiple heart surgeries and tiny valve opening, it was a surprise to me that his reaction was to get a sleep study. I don't have sleep apnea?! What straw is this he's grasping at? I told him I would get one only to humor him, and he made it clear that he would not support disability unless a sleep problem was ruled out. No one, not once, has ever heard me snore. In any case, my sleep study is Thursday night. While I'm expecting it to be fine there is the chance that something physical is going on that's keeping me from a really good sleep. And then I think about wearing a CPAP at night--wow, what a wonderful cacophony of sounds: blowing of that and my heart clicking away. Let's not go there....
Just came across a sampler verse done by a great-great-great-great....grandmother of mine in 1797. I was looking up a reference for the sampler I have, done in 1788, which reads 'While with the needle every tint is wrought/Constant industry adds new wings to thought/And as on canvas letters are imprest/Each growing virtue springs within the breast'. Not a real rallying cry for anyone, but from a Puritanical outlook is a reason for young ladies to spend their time stitching. Well, apparently things must have gotten worse from there, because the sampler done eight years later now tells the subsequent generations: 'Be virtuous and industrious/And happiness will attend you/If you do not expect too much'. Now isn't that a lousy teaching point?! Keep your expectations really low and then you stand a better chance of being happy. Methinks they were all too stressed, and wouldn't you be with no electricity or indoor plumbing?
It's the small things that sometimes give the biggest tickle! Thanks for checking, Laurie
posted by Laurie @ 5:19 PM
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