Third times a charm

Well the heart catherization finally happened and just as I suspected they can't find out what is causing the heart enlargement. So basically I went through three weeks of stress and anxiety to find out absolutely nothing. Not to mention the pain and humiliation of the entire procedure. First of all they schedule the procedure for eight am which means I have to be at the hospital at six thirty am. This is because I have to have additionaly blood work done since the blood work they did in the hospital is over thirty days old. Now if they hadn't rescheduled this the previous two times I wouldn't have had to endure another blood draw....but nooooooo. The timing of this also means hat I have to trust Drake and Peyton to get themselves ready for school and onto the bus without my supervision and my help. I know this shouldn't be an issue for most mothers with a fourteen and twelve year old. But you really have to understand how helpless I have raised these two precious boys to be. Generally I am the one standing outside in the freezing cold, rain, snow, sleet or heat watching for the bus. I usually stand out on the porch and report into my children the buses progress down our road...Drake and Peyton the bus is on the road....Drake and Peyton hurry up the bus is at Nick's house......OMG please boys the bus is at Marcus' house...Drake and Peyton right now the bus is pulling up...no Drake I don't have any gum....no Peyton I didn't pack your shorts for wrestling....as they are running out the door...yes Peyton I will drop off the things you need for practice.... This is my typical morning routine just for the bus ride to school. I don't have time or energy to go into the hour that precedes this part of the morning. I won't even mention the morning that they don't get to the bus and our bus driver from hell leaves them here for me to drive to school. See I officially have the worst bus driver on the planet. This woman absolutely can not stand me. She has driven my children to school for nearly a decade now and had never so much as spoken to me (and this was before I started reporting her to the school transportation board) Well anyway I get to the hospital and am taken back to the prep area where I have the pleasure of stripping down to nothing but the worlds ugliest hospital gown blood work is drawn and IV inserted. Then I get the pleasure of having maintenance work done on my hoo hoo under bright flourescent hospital lights. Once I am taken back to the cath lab to have the procedure I have to slide off of the bed I am on and onto the table while wearing the hospital gown as I am trying to manuever myself from the table to the bed the nurse begins laughing that she hasn't seen anyone do it like me before. She says she always gets a kick out of how different folks approach the transition. I explain to her that I am trying to get from the bed to the table without showing the entire surgical staff all my personal business. Then they all start laughing and the nurse says not to worry about because as soon as I am on the table the are going to remove my hospital gown anyway.....well ain't this just wonderful..I have already endured having my hoo hoo remodeled by one nurse in broad daylight..now I get to show four other people my newly maintenced hoo hoo along with every other inch of my completely naked body...can anyone please tell me what contest in hell I have won???? At this point I am crying not only because I am scared to death now I get to add loss of dignity and humiliation to this wonderful day. When my doctor arrives he tells them to go ahead and give me the sedation to take the edge off and to cam me down. The nurse says she will put this in my IV and in just a few seconds I won't even care what is going on..... oh really LIAR...when that doesn't work they opt for a second one. The nurse says with the second one I probably won't even remember what went on......LIAR. Fully aware and still edgy once they are finished the nurse ask me if I can even remember what went on. I procede to tell her exactly what occured. She is surprised that I can recall every second of the proceedure she says most folks don't even realize what is going on. I must be pretty tolerant to the drug. Aren't I just sooooo lucky. Now mind you if I drink one mixed drink I am likely to sleep for twelve to thirteen hours..but sedatives adminstered in an IV that are meant to put someone to sleep has very little affect on me. When they are finished and the finally take me back to recovery they tell me I have to lay back here for at least an hour before I can go back to the regular recovery room. I aks them why because I was told I would be taken right back to where they had me to begin with prior to the heart cath. The nurse says that I need to stay back there until the tubes come out....excuse me? What tubes?...no one said anyting about any tubes..this is when the nurse tells me that they were unable to put the plug in the artery so now I have one venus and one arterial tube hanging out of my leg....Holy #%$%^ this little piece of information just blows my little oars right out of the water. See I don't like medical stuff, I don't like needles and I have always lived with the motto "NO NEW HOLES" I figure God gave me all the holes in my body that he wanted me to have and I don't feel it necessary to have new ones put on me..let alone have holes in me with objects hanging out of them. When the nurse comes back over to check the incision site and take my vitals she is concerned because my blood pressure is quite low and they can not get pulses in my legs. I tell her not to be concerned that my blood pressure is often low and especially low when I am on the verge of fainting because I can not stop thinking about the tubes hagning out of my leg. Seeing that I am now almost in a full blown panic attack as my mind will not stop envisioning these bloody tubes hanging out of my body. They contact the doctor to get the okay to give me just one more shot of something to take the edge off. I explain to her that more medication is not going to take the edge off the only thing that is going to take the edge off is when they get the tubes that I was not told about out of my body. They medicate me anyway and tell me between all three shots of sedative I should sleep through the remainder of this ordeal....LIARS. The nurse injects the third dose of sedative and walks away. As I am lying there I can see another nurse over my the nurses station chowing down on a Lindsey's donut I am contemplating hopping out of this bed tubes and all to tackle her for this delectable little treat but I chicken out. When the other nurse comes back over to check on me I tell her she needs to warn Nurse Donut to go eat somewhere where I can't see her. I have not had any coffee this morning let alone my favorite breakfast on the planet a chocolate covered cream filled donut. She says don't worry we are going to take the tubes out and then we can send you back to the regualr recovery room and you can have something to drink and a snack. Thank God!! When they come back to take the tubes out one nurse says she is going to take the tubes out and the other one wil apply pressure for fifteen minutes to the site. Sounds simple enough. When I tell you apply pressure I don't think you can quite grasp what special kind of pressure from hell I am talking about. Let's just say that if it had not been for fear of bleeding to death I would have most certainly taken my good leg to do some sort of Chuck Norris round house kick to this nurses head multiple times to get her to leave me alone. Once I have endured this fifteen minutes of torture they call to have someone take me back to the regular recovery area where they tell me I can eat and have something to drink. They didn't tell me I could do this but only while lying flat on my back unable to move. To top it all off when they bring my darling husband Tony back to see me he is holding a nice steaming cup of hot coffee..coffee I would really like to grab and pour over his handsome head. I figure it is probably too risky to try and drink steaming hot coffee while lying flat on my back and the way my luck is going I am likely to suffethird degree burns if I attempt it. I settle on a diet coke and a snickerdoodle cookie. My new nurse informs me that they have ran out of donuts but the other nurse back in the tube hanging recovery area called her to tell her to give me a donut.. I must have really scared that woman which I found quite amusing. I mean here she is trying to take care of multiple post op recovery patients and she is calling up front to tell the other nurses to give me a donut..this is just too funny. Well I have to lay on the flat of my back for another two hours if I do okay with that then I am told I will have to sit up for one hour and then I can go home. Thank the Lord this all went well and I got to leave the hospital in three hours. Of course the sedation hits me once I got home when I didn't care if I was sedated. I ended up sleeping most of the afternoon away and Peyton even made me dinner when he came home. I also had no problem going back to sleep last night. But when I woke up at five thirty this morning I discovered my back had gone out from having to lay on it for so long. Now to put the icing on the cake the painters arrived today to cheer me on!! So other than the soreness from the heart cath, the bad back flaring up and cramps..it is shaping up to be a great day!!! Well at least I get out of going to the wrestling meet tonight and tomorrow. I guess I should count my blessings!!

Yes I am still here

So thanks to all of you have been asking when I was going to begin writing my blog again. So sorry for my lack of blogging recently. Believe me it is not due to lack of anything interesting to tell. I am still me after all and there is always a story to tell. So as you know I did a little time in the hospital back in December serving time sharing a room with septic lady as a roommate. Then the Monday following Christmas I had to go back in for a stress test. Now I know why they call it a stress test that stupid thing liked to kill me. And had I not been to prideful to cry in front of the skinny little fit twenty something administering the test I really would have cried. Little skinny butt is telling me that I have to keep going for a certain amount of time and my heart rate has to reach a certain level or the entire test has to be rescheduled. OMG seriously, if I have to kill over and die to get this test over with I will. There is no way am I going to go through all this again. When I finally asked her what heart rate we were trying to reach she would say "oh just a little bit higher", now you can call me crazy but when you can see the rhythm of your heart through your shirt I happen to think that perhaps is high enough??? No not for this chick, she was like Julian Michael's on steroids or something. See I have often thought I would love to have a personal trainer, you know someone to really get me motivated. Well after the stress test not so much. I figure it really wouldn't be worth the cost of the trainer, then the cost to bail me out of jail and the possible lawsuit from where I got arrested for beating the living tar out of some skinny little blond number whom could have quarters bouncing off her firm elevated posterior. After living through the torture test as I now call it. I had to follow up with a cardiologist wow not even forty-one and I get my very own cardiologist...yeah for me!! After visiting him he tells me once again that I have an enlarged heart and it has gotten slightly bigger over the last three years. Now on those days when I am feeling PMS free and I am spreading joy to those around me and they say "oh Jami you are so sweet you have such a big heart" I can respond "don't I know it." My newly acquired cardiologist tells me I need to have a heart cath done to find out what is causing this big ole heart of mine before they can treat me to prevent further damage. We proceed to schedule it for the following Thursday. Well the Wednesday before the scheduled procedure is my Mom's 78th birthday so being the dutiful daughter...well really just wanting an excuse to eat cake I go to my Mom's to spend the day with her. Hoping it will take my mind off of what is going to go on the following day it didn't really help. I was stressed all day and getting really anxious about the whole thing. Unfortunately I am one of those folks whom shows every emotion on her face. I mean I can say one thing but my face will tell you exactly what is really going on. So even if my mouth is lying my eyes, cheeks and everything else on my face will tell the truth. I wonder if perhaps a little botox would cure this problem. Don't worry I don't see botox in my near future considering the hospital bills that are now rolling in. I honestly don't think I can convince Tony to pay for botox right now. After I arrive home Wednesday night from my mom's I check the voice mail and find that the hospital has called and cancelled the procedure. Oh this is just fabulous so I spent my entire day stressing out for absolutely no reason. On Thursday morning when I wake up and contact the doctors office they tell me they have rescheduled the heart cath for the following Wednesday. (this was just this past Wednesday) I once again tell Tony he will need to take the day off to take me to the hospital. So when I first asked the cardiologist about this test I was told it was a forty five minute procedure with about a two hour recovery then I could go home. Well each time they reschedule this thing it gets a little longer. When they reschedule me now the procedure is still only forty five minutes to an hour with a recovery of six to seven hours then I can go home. Another little perk is I get to get my hoo hoo groomed for this thing. I didn't find this out until just this week when the lady at the hospital called to go over my instructions prior to the procedure. She said that there would be someone there to shave the area around the groin. When I asked if I could do it myself at home the night before she said "ma'am no we prefer to do it here at the hospital as you could nick yourself and cause an infection at the sight." I began to ask her about possibly using hair remover cream but then I thought about what happened last time I did that. (That is another post all to itself) I wanted so badly to ask her what is really worse infection or humiliation? Personally I don't like the thoughts of some stranger remodeling my basement under fluorescent lighting with probably a couple other orderlies or something standing around. I mean I am a woman who has been married for fifteen years and still prefers the lights be off at certain times if you know what I mean. For crying out loud if I don't want the man I have been married to for fifteen years to take a daylight tour of the basement how comfortable could I be with a total stranger wielding a sharp object on my hoo hoo. With the procedure scheduled for Wednesday needless to say I spend both Monday and Tuesday stressing myself out about the whole thing. I also have to mention how very little I appreciate those who make the comments like "oh it is no big deal, I have had one or so and so had one and they really aren't that bad." Oh really, you know what of course it isn't that bad in retrospect you idiots and it isn't that bad when it isn't you going through it. I also have to wonder if perhaps they are saying that like women tell pregnant women about child birth. We all lie about it to the one who is expecting "oh it isn't that bad." what a load of crap that is but we say it don't we ladies? Finally Wednesday arrives and I send the boys off to school and field the numerous phone calls from my family. I am getting ready to take a shower and head off for the world's most expensive "kitty grooming" and the phone rings. The lady informs me that my heart cath is going to once again have to be rescheduled. yeah I was definitely an ax murderer or something in a former life. This woman proceeds to tell me that the machine broke....okay...I guess I should just be happy that it broke now instead of in the middle of the procedure. So now I am once again in limbo waiting on the call to find out when it will be rescheduled. Another perk of not having a scheduled date for the kitty grooming procedure I did manage to get my Christmas tree down today. I had been considering decorating it for Valentine's day. Now however if the hospital or doctor doesn't contact me soon this grooming thing could become an issue if you know what I mean?? It appears hoo hoo is taking on her winter coat and if they don't call me soon Tony may not see the Forest for the trees!! I know I know too much information but cut me some slack here would ya? I have been through medical uckiness, the holidays, and the longest winter break in history..yeah did I mention my children went to school for an entire half day last week. Combined with the fact that good old Ohio got above freezing today or the first time this year. I will keep you posted with the latest when I have more and believe me there is always more!!