15 posts tagged “breathing”

well it's 6 ish am and i'm not sleeping.  have had some difficulty the last few days getting more than three hours sleep at a time, which is a bitch.  sleeping is one of my greatest pleasures, and until this weekend, one of my greatest talents.  However I've caught up with every blog i read, every episode of House, Lost, and Fringe that i have missed, and read TWO magazines cover-to-cover.  if that is in fact, productive at all.

So.  haven't been here lately.  Um. it's not you it's me.

I just haven't felt like spending a lot of time in front of the computer, I guess. In fact I didn't even turn it on last night.  If you know me, you know this is weird.  this is totally unlike me.. this is..

...this is what's up:

a) OMG they have free cups of coffee at kroger.  So like, you are shopping and you're like next to the donuts, looking at the donuts but not with intent to buy or anything. Just looking. Like, honey glazed donuts. Looking at the way the glaze has pooled and dried into a clump of honey-glaze sugar awesome ecstasy in the bottom of the box.  And maybe you're thinking about the donuts.. like well hell. i'm NOT buying six donuts but if they sold ONE donut I'd probably get just the one and OH MY GOD IS THAT FREE COFFEE???  The coffee machine (robocoffee) is a bit complicated, considering that the persons using it are desperate enough for coffee to drink free grocery store coffee, after all, but the oldest man in the world showed me how.  I said "has this always been here???" and he said "yes". and I said "OMG i'm totally coming here all the time". 

b) Not that I need free coffee however.  I just got my bonus from Awesome Wireless Company, and I'm a thousandaire, folks. yes that's right. Right now, and probably for the next several hours, I have an amount of money almost equal to my amount of debt.  Or at least, the amount of debt on my Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Visa card, which had purchased many things to fill my inner void when I was living in cali (where inner voids are very, very large).  and which I've been paying for since.

c) I skipped running today b/c it was misty and cold.  I'm so not into being cold AND wet at the same time. I went to kickbox instead. 

d) Thursday night I met up with Cricket, a fellow voxer.  She works at an east nashville restaurant and bar, and we had a nice chat after she got off work etc. She's utterly adorable.  and the bar has sake.  I spent most of yesterday with a vague sake-induced headache, but it was so worth it.  I vote we all (nashville) head down there on some random thursday night.  and drink some sake.

e) health: there is more to discuss with respect to health, but that's going to be probably tomorrow and certainly neighborhood-only.  Which means if you're in my neighborhood you can get the nitty-gritty, if you want it.  and if you aren't, you get this:  I'M HEALTHY! THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH ME!  I FEEL LIKE A MILLION BUCKS!!

and that's all true.... with some provisos.  but true nonetheless.  Recently, I've had the most amazing workouts, I sleep like a baby, and I'm feeling almost completely well.  I expect the coming weeks to bring further improvement. and then I'll be back to my old awesome self.  AWESOME.   hella. 

Ok that's it.  I fell asleep during our ipod'd LOST episode last night, so it's time to plop on the couch and get my LOST-on. 

a) it's time to celebrate my darlings:   after much phone tag, Mr. Pulmonologist himself pronounced me condition-free, meaning my heart and lungs are as good as they can be and I'm not dying of anything.  I am, simply, batshit crazy.

hella.

b) I'm celebrating by having a gin and tonic with my cat, which means i'm drinking it, and he's licking the outside of the glass.  He's sort of middle aged, for a cat, and when he goes, this is what I'll remember.  i doubt another cat will ever share a drink with me the way Jonas Spawn of Satan has shared the drinks with me

c) i ate some of my awesome boyfriend's beef jerky.  but i think he'll understand.  it's a protein and iron thing.  it's a girl thing.  Honey i love you.  Gomez.

d) there is no d.

e) someone asked me to partner up for some cool dance events, today.  (hella)

f) I am in love and can probably count on living a long, healthy life with the man of my dreams.  does it get any better than that?

yay.

HELLA.

I've just cancelled my 'follow-up' appointment with my pulmonologist because it was pointless.  Or, at this point, it is pointless.  I called today for results, and there are none; he hasn't gone over them yet and had nothing to report.  So wait, I'm supposed to take off work, drive, park, pay $20 co-pay, sit in an office and WAIT for him to come into an office and tell me that I do or do not have some terrible disease? Why can't he do that on the telephone and save us both the trouble of a face-to-face? Why?

the answer is: no reason.  I've decided not to like him because he wouldn't agree that I had asthma.  He made me feel it was urgent that i go in for assorted tests and then he couldn't be bothered to process the results.  He is willing to let me come in and waste half a day for what is potentially nothing, at the same time preventing actual patients in need (maybe those other FIFTEEN people in the waiting room with tubes and oxygen tanks) from seeing him.  He's ridiculous. 

If he calls me and tells me something useful, i'll make an appointment to see him.  If he doesn't, I'll simply get the results from my PCP (who is altogether pleasant and accommodating) and she and I can discuss what to do next. 

AHHH i feel like 100x better just having exerted this one measure of control. 

i'm freaking out.

I've got this echocardiogram tomorrow to find out if my non-asthma is something called pulmonary hypertension.

Which is like, the worst disease ever.

I wiki'd it, like a fucking dumbass, and even though I'm missing a number of the 'signs and symptoms', you know of course i'm just fucking convinced I've got it and it's killing me.

I wish i had the kind of job that would get busy all of a sudden, distract me from all this shit. but i don't. So i took an ativan.

which will probably help.

I want to hug my boyfriend like, RIGHT NOW.

copied from my reply to the parents:

It's off to the cardiologist I go. My first ever specialist-type doctor. 

Breathing et al was not so good yesterday so I'm anxious to see this man and get this all wrapped up.  For ease of access I've removed my own heart and it's there --> throbbing in a tupperware.

Oh beat, beat little heart. You've got quite a day ahead of you.

by Kat S.

So everywhere I'm standing is uphill.  Over there ---> is downhill.  If I go there, it is, miraculously, uphill.

Things are a lot shinier than you think.

My hands are icy.  My lips will not move the way I expect, but it's ok, I forget words.  Forgetting them saves me the trouble of sounding like I lost the title-fight, when I say them.

My right side is much heavier than my left side.  This makes placing myself a little awkward.

Actually, it's just that my right side is facing always downhill, here in my apartment.

Actually, it's just that everything is sort of leaning right. Including my computer and vox, and everything I'm typing.

I'm kind of tired.  I slept 10 hours last night. My heart didn't race all day, and I had a SUPERB workout tonight.  My energy level was great. 

My breathing is still off.

But i feel kind of ok.  Did you know that beta blockers decrease symptoms of stage fright? of social anxiety disorder?  Did you know that they can cause crazy dreams?  Last night I dreamed Katherine Heigl was running for president, and she was putting on lipstick and said:

"I think it's ok if girls want to be naked once in a while"

Then she smiled, and the screen flashed to a pundit who said "And that's where she lost the race"

My doc called today and left a msg to call her back about the heart monitor results. For all the other tests I've had, they've just sent a form letter with 'you passed' or whatever, so I'm wondering why the phone call. Unless something is wrong. right?

SO here I am analyzing how she sounded on the phone (chipper? or fake chipper?!) and thinking about how quickly they worked on that (3 hours). Unreal. I'm not used to that kind of attention.

And now I've left a msg for her to call me on my office phone, and I'm waiting. and waiting. And panicking. I've gotten pretty accustomed to the way panic feels for me, so I know when it starts. Which is totally weird, b/c I'm not a panicky person. Or I wasn't.

gah. please call. please call now. please call now..

ok back to waiting.

normally I would have replied to your comments on the 'breathe' post, but I was so overwrought at the time, and most of today, I just didn't have a chance.

But I wanted to say thank you for putting so much thought into what you wrote.  It made me feel immensely and rather immediately better to read what you'd written.  I had renewed hope, and I felt valid in one of my weaker moments.  Or one of my more honest moments, perhaps.

I'm not a person who accepts defeat easily most of the time, so it was difficult to try and fail with my own health.  Twice, as far as I was concerned.  You all made me feel like I had so many other options to try, and that I was justified to feel as frustrated as I did.  That helped so much with the anxiety.  I swear, 80% of what's going on with me is sheer panic, of not breathing, of illness, of being out of control of a basic human function.  After reading your comments, I felt.. well not 'healed'. but better about being sick.  Or something.

So today, I went to the doctor and just layed it out... How I'm feeling physically and how it's making me a crazy person, emotionally.  I started crying right away, and she did just what you guys did, she told me it was ok and totally normal to get stressed out. She understood and agreed that I was making it worse with anxiety. She in fact offered to treat the anxiety at least temporarily, to take the edge off of what I'm experiencing.  I said no, mostly because I'm functional right now, and so far I'm hanging in there with the occasional verbal nudge.  I'd rather not medicate unless I'm desperate for it.  I think antianxiety meds are probably a lifesaver for people who need them occasionally... I'm just not ready to be one of those people, not yet.

I get by with a little help from my friends.

A thousand thanks, guys, really.  Super hugs.

kat