raising willow… and dexter!

It certainly turned out to be an eventful birthday, one that I won’t forget in a hurry. I had planned to spend the day at home because Dexter was just getting over being sick and it needs to be 24 hours from last diahorrea before he can go to FDC. Since he was going to be at home, I was going to keep Willow at home and enjoy the time with the two of them. A had taken three days of work (he gets paid leave, I don’t) already, so I figured it was my turn.

Instead, I ended up in hospital. At midnight I woke up with severe, sharp chest pains. At 20 past 12, the pain was still really bad, so A called the ambulance. The ambulance came and off I went to hospital, but by the time we got there the pain had stopped. Regardless, with my family history (Dad died of a heart attack at 52 and Mum died of a sub-arachnoid haemorrhage at 43 and both had high blood pressure) they took it seriously and started testing. I had blood taken, a chest X-ray done, BSLs done, ECGs done, and blood pressure taken several times. My blood pressure started at about 130 over 110, but went down.

Meanwhile, poor A was at home worried sick.

I finally fell asleep around 3am, but it is hard to sleep with a gelco (needle) in your arm, a monitor on your finger, ECG leads running off you, the constant noise of the emergency department and on an uncomfortable hospital bed! I woke up at 7am when the shift changed. More blood was taken, more ECGs were done and my blood pressure was taken several more times. The last time it was taken it was 110 over 70 which is fantastic. I was then moved to triage and stared at the wall and read trashy mags for some time, then a doctor decided that a stress test needed to be done.

The orderly wheeled me in the bed to Gynae out patients not Cardio outpatients! Eventually I got to the right place.

Picture this, if you will. Me in a hospital gown, with 12 ECG leads attached to my chest doing a very fast uphill walk on the treadmill while the nurses tried to take my blood pressure. Not a pretty sight!

As it turns out my heart is fine. They already knew that the axis of my heart deviates to the left, but that isn’t a big deal. They didn’t have an answer for why I was in such pain. I got lectures from two different doctors about taking my blood pressure medication regularly, so I will. I hate that I have to take it, that I will probably be taking to for the rest of my life. But I guess it is better than the alternative.

I finally got the doctor to take the needle out of my arm, got dressed in my pyjamas, fluffy slippers and coat *blush* and caught a taxi home.

Got home to my beautiful family and Willow gave me my birthday present. Maggie Beer’s book, Maggie’s Harvest. It is a beautiful book and it will certainly extend my cooking repertoire!

We then went for a late lunch at IKEA and a bit of a wander around there, came home, flopped out for a little while before going to Hog’s Breath Cafe. It’s not exactly gourmet, but it is close, caters for children and cheap!

This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 10:04 pm and is filed under life, jim, but not as we know it. You can follow responses to this entry through the Comments RSS Feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your site.