Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Tired

Mornin. Just me. Woke up about earlier again today, but we fell asleep about 4 or 5 o’clock pm. Think we were wakened by 3 phone calls though, so it wasn’t straight sleep. Needless to say ... we did sleep and it was for a pretty long time.

Little slow to start here. We’ve been up for about an hour going through email. Somewhere along the line we’d signed up for some kind of email on "heart" news. This time we settled down to be reading some of it. We feel concerned.

Yesterday, we went to the cardiac unit to have the exercise-echocardiograph test done. I don’t know if anyone thought we were going to do it, but somehow we managed to get through it. Not in flying colors though. The technician knew about our arthritis stopping us within about 5 minutes, so she was sneaky. She brought us from the slow to the fast speed in that amount of time.

At rest our heart beat was 95 and they were able to get me up to 134, before we had to stop. It wasn’t the heart or arthritis that was hurting though. It was our upper arms and shoulders. I know dumb... We’d been gripping so hard to the bar, that the pain became intolerable. We felt scared to death to be on this tread mill. Couldn’t begin to say why, or which parts might have been involved.

We seemed ok enough with our breathing during the test, but as soon as it stopped, we began hyperventilating. That wasn’t so much fun. Maybe it had something to do with the papers they make you sign. They listed out some horrible things that could happen including having a heart attack. Then they tried to reassure us with the knowledge, they would know what to do if we had one. Thought what kind of test is this?!

There was some question too, in that it wasn’t the laying down bike test that had been listed on the paper. She talked about some of the other test options including one that was 5 hours long! It was like please, please let us get this over efficiently!

As it were the test was only about 5 ½ minutes long. I’m hoping that Irun doesn’t read this. We’re in deplorable health. The technician said during the test that I was doing wonderful ... then she prefaced it by saying for a 60 year old. That one stung. A lot. It followed me home and is haunting our head now. I had told her we’d once been a state level cross country skier. She said that if we started now, we could be skiing again by the age of 50. No comment on that one.

We were 130 pounds lighter six years ago, but had problems with a sexual attack that necessitated electric shock treatments. We’ve been fairly divorced from our body ever since. We don’t seem to be helping ourselves. But, until we prioritize this with Dr. M., there is little he can do for us with the mind games that happen in our head.

I don’t know what is going to happen, before we allow it to sink in that we really have to change our lifestyle. This excuse is very old and useless. It’s just that I know at that time our health changed and we’ve never recovered. Just makes me tired to think about it. Going back to bed.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have great faith in you all that this is just a minor problem that you will surmount. I expect you all will become more concious of your body and start "fixing" it. There are a whole bunch of us who want you around for a long time to come. Forget the past and focus on feeling better. Look forward to each new day and it's challanges. You will win.  My regards, Bill.

Anonymous said...

poor sweeties... tests always involve them telling us the "worst case scenario". Gets me all in a tizzie too.  Lifestyle changes are always a good idea.  Me mean wll and want to do them, but it's hard.  You have been through many things in your lives and it's a hard choice to choose between our physical health and mental health.  You are working on yourselves and I wouldn't take it too much to heart. (((hugs)))
Tammy

Anonymous said...

Hang in there, etal.....Must be so hard With the little ones!   Prayers!
[[[hugs]]]
V