Just had to show what Eva, my buddy in Canada, sent to me. Wah, thanks a bunch, Eva! Now, I just wonder if I can pry that little teddy bear off of there so I can stick the mug in the dishwasher when I want to use it. He looks like he really wants a mug of java, as Dee the Coffee Bean Goddess calls it.

I guess I'm just one of those people who's heart pops out of rhythm and then pops back in. For this lucky trick, I get to be on three more pills a day besides my blood pressure pill and my diabetes pill. One of those pills is to keep my blood from clotting and the other two are to regulate my heartbeat. That sucks. I don't mind taking pills if I need them but that sure uptakes my expenses quite a lot. I'm not on any restricted diet or activity schedule so whatever I feel like doing, I can do it, except for things that involve falling like roller skating, bungee jumping, mountain climbing. Guess I have to cancel my trek up Mt. Everest now.

Oh, yeh, and I get to have my blood tested once a week for awhile and then it will be once a month for as long as I'm on this blood thinning medicine. How lucky can one get?

When one's heart goes into an atrial fibrilation, like mine did (heart racing and beating irregular which I could feel the whole time it was doing it) the biggest danger is a stroke. Blood can pool in the heart because the heart isn't pumping right and clots can form. So, they did three different types of tests to see if I had any blood clots, any heart damage or disease, or any narrow or blocked arteries. And I don't. Whew! This 'a fib' has happened to me five or six times before over the last 5 or 6 years, and it always went back to normal after a good night's sleep. That's basically what happened again this time. I didn't go to the doctor the other times because I didn't know what it was. I thought it was hormones doing something weird to me.

This time I felt lightheaded, dizzy, had a headache, and generally weird along with feeling my heart pounding in my chest so it alarmed my husband and daughter and they made me call the doctor. Reluctantly, I called. I had to go right into the doctor's office. My daughter drove me. They did an EKG there and the doctor says, "I have bad news...you have to go to the ER." I hadn't been worried, this had happened five or six times before and stopped the next day. It was nothing. But...it was something as I found out later (as explained above about 'a fib'). I was reluctant, the first thing out of my mouth was, "No, I can't go. I have raccoons to feed! Who's going to feed them?"

I know where my priorities are...heh, heh.

But I went and was subsequently admitted much to my dismay. Amy reassured me that Todd would take over feeding the raccoons even though he wasn't going to like it. And he did and he didn't like it. He's a trooper. He admitted though that where I was giving them Weston Hotel treatment, they were getting Motel 6 treatment with him.

The 'a fib' stopped at 8:30 the next morning as I was sitting up in the chair in my hospital hooked up to an IV full of two drip bags, ensconced in an extra large hospital gown that I was constantly pulling shut in front (I put it on with the opening in front so that there would be easy access to the little five electrodes that were taped to my chest and to the portable heart monitor that was hanging from the electrode wires; I had to tuck the little monitor under my boobs to keep it from dangling on the floor and getting in my way), and lamenting the fact that I didn't get served any breakfast since they had a test scheduled for me that morning. When I finally was served breakfast on my last day there, I realized that I hadn't been missing anything. That French toast was yucky and they never once gave me a choice of bacon or sausage, sigh.

I was going to get an angiogram of sorts and then probably get my heart shocked. I think that scared my body enough so that the 'a fib' disappeared. So, since they couldn't do their shock treatment on me, they scheduled me for an echocardiagram--an ultrasound for the heart. During my lovely stay at the hospital, I learned all about what tests they do on heart patients because I think I had all of them, or nearly all of them (I sidestepped the heart shock one), done on me.

The next day I got a stress test. Since there was no way I could get up to a run on the treadmill they gave me a drug that would raise the volume of blood in my heart as if I had run on the treadmill. That was six minutes of uncomfortable but not intolerable tightness in my throat and chest. Then they injected some radioactive material into my IV so that they could put me under the MRI for twenty minutes where you absolutely have to lie still flat on your back. Then you sit out in the hallway for half an hour and they give you a box lunch consisting of a turkey sandwich, a Sara Lee pound cake, and applesauce (so many carbs, so little insulin), only in my case it was an hour because they had gotten backed up, you get injected with some more radioactive material, wait another half hour, then you spend another twenty minutes in the MRI again. No box lunch after that one. You get sent back to your room and hope that they've ordered you some dinner.

That test showed something abnormal there in the heart chambers so that meant that another test was scheduled for the next day which meant for the third day in a row I'd have no breakfast. I ended up having no lunch, either.

Now this test was scarier than the others, to me, at least. Sharon, the one nurse I had for three days in a row, came in and sat down on my bed while I was sitting in the chair, and did her best to reassure me. I think Sharon liked me. She said I was a super patient and less complaining and demanding than most the patients on the ward. I was probably the youngest, too, from my observances when walking up and down the hall. That place was full up every single day. They'd get one popped out and another one would pop in. I had two great roommates and two sucky roommates in my five days of being there.

So, they finally came at 1:00 to get me for the angiogram, or cardiac cathereterization as it is also called. They put an IV in my femoral artery in the groin area, fish a scope up through my arteries to my heart, flush some kind of warm liquid in there, and have a look around. If there is any clogging or blockage then they would perform an angioplasty--that balloon thingie that compresses all the plaque against the artery walls, and then put in a stent to hold the plaque back.

I was given Valium and Fentanyl to sedate me just enough so I didn't care what they did to me but I wish they had given it to me before I had to get shaved. Yes, down there. That scrub nurse was brutal! I was awake enough so that I could cough when they needed me to. I kept asking questions and couldn't hear myself very well. The doctor (whom I never saw) and nurses just ignored me. Then I heard them say it was over and I asked what they found. The doctor answered this one and said that they didn't find anything, everything looked normal. No arteries clogged, no blockages, no heart disease. Whew! Later, my doctor and a nurse told me that having big breasts can make the MRI look abnormal and that's why they had to do the angiogram just to be sure what was or was not in there.

Off to a short stay in post-op where the IV was pulled out of the artery and the nurse had to put extreme pressure on the opening for five minutes or so to get it to clot. Then a five pound sandbag was put on top of it, moreso to help me remember not to move they said, and I was taken back up to my room where I had to lie flat for four hours without moving that leg around or lifting my head. That was so no pressure was put on the muscles down there so I wouldn't start bleeding. Actually, that was the hardest part. Not being able to move for four hours. I could prop up my other leg by moving carefully but that was it. The small part of my back was already sore when I was brought back up to my room. Another four hours of having to lie on it was killer.