If I had the energy at night to write these entries, I guarantee you they would look much different. The accumulation of the day's stresses become a bit more blurry in the light of morning; just a fact. At night I'm very clear on how I feel about things, what I really want to do about them, and I'm in-touch with the severity of the damage being done. How am I supposed to find solutions when the problems scuttle away to hide near my subconscious when the sun rises? I say "Near my subconscious" because I'm well aware that they're there, it's just that it becomes easier when facing a new day. Kind of ridiculous on my part, you know, allowing that to happen.
It's indifference and lack of humanity rearing it's ugly head again. This permeates everything I do, want to do, and try to do. I've lost my resolve when it comes to relying on myself for strength, guidance, self-esteem, and so many more important and necessary matters. How did this happen? How did I become so complacent in my own undoing.... yet again? And, is there a way out?
Yesterday I had the first part of a two part stress test. If you don't know how those work, the first part is all about placing your body under monitored and rigorous stress; in this case, exercise. I'm not talking about normal exercise, but the kind that has NO warmup and NO cool-down, and you jump right into raising your HR as quickly as possible. The low end of the target HR for these tests is 145 BPM, and the goal is to go as long as possible with the incline (on the treadmill) raising, and the speed raising every 3 minutes. It's pretty rough, which is the point.
I was only about 5 minutes into the test before the burning in my chest started, then the pain that went through to my back. No, that wasn't a heart attack, though you certainly can feel those things if a heart attack was happening. In this case... it was angina (chest pain), and the tests and imaging done afterwards are to determine IF something is wrong and WHAT that something is. I had an EKG machine hooked up to me the entire time, so if something really bad were happening they would have known.
I had to call off the test--which is how it works btw--due to the chest pain and being unable to breathe well (understatement). The test stopped abruptly (as is the protocol with or without problems arising) and I was told to sit down. The pain began to subside as soon as I sat down and was completely gone shortly thereafter. By the time my HR returned to normal I was fine. I have no idea what the significance is (if any) of that experience, but I'm sure they'll tell me eventually.
The second portion (resting) will happen on Monday November 2nd.
I might add that they place an IV port in your arm when you get a test like this; one reason is so they can inject the tracer (radioactive contrast solution), and the other is in case of emergency they can begin administering medications, etc. immediately. I will get the same tracer on the resting portion of the test on Monday.
So where am I going with this and what does it have to do with 'indifference'?
Usually I read through a heart disease forum I belong to so I can see what experience others have had with any given situation. In this case I read up on events during stress tests, ones that match my situation. Wasn't good, what I found, but I'm not one to panic or get worked up over something that is probably NOT my issue. I do, however, like to be informed--it's the smart thing to do.
I passed what information I found about the occurrence on to T. No reaction, no concern, not a thing. Now, one thing I didn't mention is that I was SUPPOSED to get the second half of the stress test TODAY. Why am I doing it on Monday? T has taken me to a few of my appointments due to my serious sleep deprivation lately... in order to avoid accidents due to my sleepiness, etc. He has a TON of acquired leave accrued and will lose them if he doesn't use them, so he's schedule his leave on days when I have an appointment. I'm grateful, no doubt about it. But I'm concerned, still, of the indifference he has, that he swears doesn't exist. And trust me--it exists.
I've had to deal with some serious health issues, and am STILL dealing with them. There's some situations that are now 'watch and wait' situations, and that's just the way it is. But when troublesome symptoms occur... I don't have anyone to tell or talk to about it. It's not a good idea to ignore the symptoms, and well... I guess I'm just in that place where I'm unsure about how long I can continue doing this.
I would take a bullet for the people I love to save their lives. Period. But what I won't do is risk my life by remaining in a situation that, well, risks my life. So what do I do about it in the meantime?
There's so much more I need to say about this, but in keeping things in context it will have to be in separate posts in order to keep things straight....
.....I'm going to post in my other blogs today, too... it's time, isn't it?
No comments:
Post a Comment