Well, Hallelujah, Rex, they have finally found something wrong with my heart.
We were only trying to convince them of that for a year and a half before you died, but they kept diagnosing my symptoms as something else.
Chest pain = hiatal hernia
Shoulder pain = old injury
Numbness and tingling in hands = carpal runnel
Neck pain = sinuses
Breathlessness = obesity
Fatigue = depression
Lethargy = thyroid
Muddled thinking = depression
But, finally, after a prolonged bout with pneumonia, they have found something. The right side of my heart is somewhat enlarged and there is a murmur.I had that before, if you remember. About twelve or fifteen years ago (How the years run together after time passes!) That time,which was also after a bout of pneumonia, it resolved itself, at least to the point of nothing being found.
Now, they want to do an angiogram think, like they did about five years ago when I had pneumonia and chest pain and they sent me to Christ hospital. And found nothing.
This time, though, they are going to put me under. If they have to put stents in, I will have to stay overnight.
And it scares me quite silly.
Dunno why. When they did it before, I was awake and the worst part was having to lie flat and not being able to go to the bathroom. Thought I was going to wet myself and their bed before they let me get up.
I am afraid they are expecting to put stents in and that that is why they are putting me under. Not afraid of the stents -- that's a fairly routine procedure these days.
The truth is, I don't really know what it is that scares me so badly.
Waking up to NOT YOU, maybe.
Again.
I should be used to that by now.
I don't think I need the stents, but I fit the profile -- fat, fifty, female.
I do not think they are looking beyond that profile.
And I think there is something more going on.
The right side of the heart, as we learned after your experience, is connected to the lungs. And I can't/don't/won't ignore the connection with the illness I had in the spring. With problems I still occasionally have -- I have become somewhat asthmatic.
Maybe I'm afraid of something wrong with my pulmonary system.
Maybe I'm afraid of not being diagnosed.
Maybe I'm afraid of COPD.
I don't know, Rex.
I just don't know.
It's all the more terrifying to me because you won't be there, not anywhere. Not at the hospital. Not waiting at home.
Not to diminish the love from daughters and sisters and friends.
But they aren't mine
They aren't you.
and I'm not too sure I wouldn't be even more frightened to see you there while I'm wandering the in-between world.
I just don't know.
That, I suppose, is the reason and the conclusion.
I just don't know.
And that is scary.
We were only trying to convince them of that for a year and a half before you died, but they kept diagnosing my symptoms as something else.
Chest pain = hiatal hernia
Shoulder pain = old injury
Numbness and tingling in hands = carpal runnel
Neck pain = sinuses
Breathlessness = obesity
Fatigue = depression
Lethargy = thyroid
Muddled thinking = depression
But, finally, after a prolonged bout with pneumonia, they have found something. The right side of my heart is somewhat enlarged and there is a murmur.I had that before, if you remember. About twelve or fifteen years ago (How the years run together after time passes!) That time,which was also after a bout of pneumonia, it resolved itself, at least to the point of nothing being found.
Now, they want to do an angiogram think, like they did about five years ago when I had pneumonia and chest pain and they sent me to Christ hospital. And found nothing.
This time, though, they are going to put me under. If they have to put stents in, I will have to stay overnight.
And it scares me quite silly.
Dunno why. When they did it before, I was awake and the worst part was having to lie flat and not being able to go to the bathroom. Thought I was going to wet myself and their bed before they let me get up.
I am afraid they are expecting to put stents in and that that is why they are putting me under. Not afraid of the stents -- that's a fairly routine procedure these days.
The truth is, I don't really know what it is that scares me so badly.
Waking up to NOT YOU, maybe.
Again.
I should be used to that by now.
I don't think I need the stents, but I fit the profile -- fat, fifty, female.
I do not think they are looking beyond that profile.
And I think there is something more going on.
The right side of the heart, as we learned after your experience, is connected to the lungs. And I can't/don't/won't ignore the connection with the illness I had in the spring. With problems I still occasionally have -- I have become somewhat asthmatic.
Maybe I'm afraid of something wrong with my pulmonary system.
Maybe I'm afraid of not being diagnosed.
Maybe I'm afraid of COPD.
I don't know, Rex.
I just don't know.
It's all the more terrifying to me because you won't be there, not anywhere. Not at the hospital. Not waiting at home.
Not to diminish the love from daughters and sisters and friends.
But they aren't mine
They aren't you.
and I'm not too sure I wouldn't be even more frightened to see you there while I'm wandering the in-between world.
I just don't know.
That, I suppose, is the reason and the conclusion.
I just don't know.
And that is scary.
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