Lessons Learned From The ER

Ever since my trip to the emergency room for my mysterious and (so far) temporary heart short circuit, I’ve been thinking a lot.  Some of that thinking had me reflecting back on the experience as I’ve told and re-told the story to friends who have been checking on me.  I certainly had plenty of time to think about lots of things during my 5 hour wait to see a doctor.

This whole experience left me dealing with a lot of emotions that were (and still are) pretty uncomfortable.   I felt embarrassed and ashamed for not taking better care of myself and having to admit that to people.  For a person with great health insurance, I've done a lousy job using it so far.  I've hated doctors my whole life, and now I've learned the hard way that avoiding them isn't a great long term plan.  Sometimes you just have to suck it up and do the right thing even if it's not fun.

I felt lonely sitting in that emergency room.  As many of my friends reminded and chastised me after, it didn't need to be that way.  They would have come had I called them.  So why didn't I call?  Partly because I've always been proud of my independence.  I've been doing things on my own for so long, it's not a natural instinct to ask someone for help first.  But if I'm being honest, it's was also largely the embarrassment I was feeling, plus the fact that I hate having anyone see me cry if I can avoid it.

But the worst part of the experience was feeling fragile for the very first time in my life.  Whenever I've been sick with a cold or the flu, I knew it would just take rest, medicine and time and I'd get better.  The few times in my life I've been in emergency rooms before this were broken bones as a kid.  You put a cast on those, give them time to heal and everything is normal again.  This was the first time in my life I honestly wasn't sure I would be okay, and it scared the hell out of me.    Even though I know now what happened to me isn't likely to be life-threatening, that new feeling of living on borrowed time is still there.

Dealing with these negative emotions hasn't been as easy process, but the silver lining is that it's left me feeling more grateful than anything.  The support from my friends was, and continues to be nothing short of amazing.   Some of them wrote or called me and shared experiences of their own that mirrored mine.  In some cases, their friends or family members were the ones impacted.  Turns out this kind of condition is more common than I ever knew, and the more my friends shared their insights, the less embarrassed, alone and fragile I felt. 

I still catch myself mentally "checking" my heart rate from time to time when something doesn't feel perfect, and I'm still committed to following up with a doctor and taking better care of myself in general.  But I'm no longer afraid of what the future holds, because I am living on borrowed time.  We all are.  Better take the time I have left and make the most of it...

Who Are Your "Loves?"

Valentine's Day gets a bad rap.  Because it's a holiday that celebrates love, and romantic love specifically, the chunk of the population currently without a boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife/partner/significant other of some sort feels like they can't participate.

I think that's just silly.  Granted, I've spent my fair share of years unattached, calling up my girlfriends and wishing them "Happy Sappy Shit Day."   But with age comes wisdom and the knowledge that some of the most significant "loves" in my life are not the romantic kind.   So I prefer to think of Valentine's Day as an occasion to celebrate the people that are most important to me every day of the year, day in and day out.

Since I'm crafty, I make them cards.

This year Michael's Crafts had so many fun things in heart shapes to choose from, I went a little wild.

I made a lot of cards this year, which helped me remember just how blessed and lucky I am to have a wonderful assortment of "loves" in my life. 

So whether you make cards, bake goodies, pass out hugs or just call on the phone, don't forget to make sure the important people in your life know how much you love them.

Happy Valentine's Day!

My Wake-Up Call

It started innocently enough, on Super Bowl Sunday.   I was enjoying a relaxing day at home, making Valentine's Day cards, when the headache started.

When I woke up with it Monday morning, and it hung around all day, I started to worry. You see, I never get headaches.  But I went to work anyway, since I wasn't feeling anything else unusual.  I wasn't congested, and didn't have a sore throat or anything that would indicate I was getting sick. I wasn't stressed out for any reason. Yet the longer the headache stuck around, the worse I started to feel. Just this total uneasiness I couldn't explain, accompanied by a new awareness of the speed of my heartbeat...which didn't feel right either.

Fifteen minutes after I got in the car to drive home at the end of my work day, it hit me.   It felt like a weigh settled on top of my chest and just sat there, and my heart felt like it would beat right out of my body.   I almost pulled over and went straight to the ER.   In hindsight, I should have.   But instead I told myself to keep breathing and try to calm down -- I was working myself into a panic attack over nothing.   I sang along with the radio to calm myself down, convinced as long as I had breath to sing I would be OK.

I made it home, put a hockey game on the radio, and laid down in my bed with two pillows under my legs. I laid there for 30 minutes, feeling my heart race and wondering when it would stop. I debated on calling an ambulance, but somehow I fell asleep for a bit.  When I woke up, I felt a little better. Maybe it was all my own doing, getting myself worked up like that.  So I spent the rest of the evening resting, getting up for short stretches, then starting to feel a little weak and laying back down again.

When I got up this morning, I felt much better that the previous evening, but still not myself. More importantly, my heart still beat too noticeably, feeling too large for my chest. I kept reminding myself to breathe, but the realization was hitting me -- what I was feeling wasn't normal.

So I headed to the emergency room -- alone and scared of what a doctor would find wrong with me.

Being hooked up to monitors isn't fun...especially wearing a hideous hospital gown...

Three vital sign checks, 1 EKG, 4 vials of blood, a chest x-ray and 7 HOURS later, the doctor had a theory -- I suffered an incidence of Supraventricular Tachycardia (SVT).  In simple terms, it's a when the electrical signal that causes your heart to beat misfires, then gets stuck on a repeat cycle.  That explained the initial burst of pressure I felt, followed by the racing heart for 30 minutes.  A person can have an episode like this with no advance symptoms, and it can go away just as quickly.  Or last for a few days.

I say theory because the doctor told me that every test result was "stone cold normal"  (he was a young guy, which explains the undoctorly lingo).  Basically, because I waited to go in and wasn't in the middle of the episode, they couldn't find anything wrong with me.  The theory was largely based on my description of what I felt.  Knowing the tests showed nothing physically wrong did make me feel a little better, at least until the doctor said he could prescribe me a short course of anti-depressants.    When I declined, he sent in a social worker (a lovely woman named Margaret and about my age, coincidentally) to talk to me about any "anxiety" I might be feeling.  She also mused about whether my hormones could be acting up.   Then I started feeling like the crazy spinster cat lady.

I suppose the fact that I was crying during the majority of the discussion with the doctor didn't help.  But after waiting 5 hours to find out what was happening to me, I was beyond exhausted emotionally.  I left work at lunch time without eating lunch, so by the time I saw the doctor the banana I had for lunch was long digested, and my only food options in the ER were from a vending machine, so of course my blood sugar was at an all-time low as well.  Most importantly, I have always been terrified of doctors in general, and hospitals specifically.  I was raised in a family where you don't see a doctor unless you need a broken bone reset or you are dying.  All that combined made me come across as an irrational mess.

So I left with aftercare instructions for Heart Palpitations and Generalized Anxiety Disorder.  More importantly, I left knowing I have to do more moving forward to take care of my health, because I don't ever want to feel this way again if I can help it.   I've been putting off a good top-to-bottom physical for far too long.

I'm done putting it off.

Stop and Look Around Once In A While...

I'm a typical Type A person, always busy running around, trying desperately to squeeze the most out of every day. Because of that, I sometimes miss out on the joy of being in the moment and experiencing something new in the process.

Today, I ran to the post office at lunch. I probably visit this location at least once a month, and when I'm standing in line waiting, I'm usually tapping away on my iPhone, checking in to Foursquare, etc. Today, I actually left my phone in my purse and happened to look up...




...and enjoyed a rare moment of beauty in a busy day.

If course, sometimes when you stop to look around, you just have to laugh...





- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Out With The Old, In With The New

My mother is a huge fan of wall calendars. She has one hanging in her kitchen with dates of birthdays, anniversaries and other significant events that happen among our family and friends every year.

She's been collecting important dates for a long time, and I would guess about 75% of the squares on her calendar are filled in with something. While I was home at Christmas, she was musing about the fact that it was about time to get a new calendar.

Now, I'm a more digital girl where it come to tracking my important dates, but I still admire a good calendar. They especially come in handy for making my work cube walls less boring.

Since today is the first full week of 2011 and my first day in the office this year, it was appropriate that I noticed my calendars needed updating.

My Pittsburgh Penguins animal welfare calendar has been good to me.




But since the Kings are no longer handing out roster cards at games, I decided my cube walls need to be a little more purple.





Welcome to 2011!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Under Construction: A Day In The Life of a Rose Bowl Float

If you've ever watched the Tournament of Roses Parade on television New Year's Day, you certainly appreciate the beauty and creativity of the flower covered floats that are the hallmark of the event.  But have you even wondered what goes on BEFORE the parade?  How are these floats made?

For the second time since I've lived in California, I had the opportunity to work on a parade float and see the incredibly hard work done for countless hours by thousands of people to make the magic on TV happen.  So here's a little insiders view of my day volunteering to help decorate this year's entry from Kaiser-Permanente.

The first thing to remember is my 7 hour decorating shift is one tiny piece of a process that takes a year from start to finish.  The floats are designed and constructed by professional float companies and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to sponsor.  During our orientation, we learned that each float costs in the neighborhood of $1 million by the time it's completed.  That's a lot of money you see floating down Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena on parade day!

When the volunteer decorating process starts, the floats are already constructed and painted so you know where materials will be placed.  What the volunteers do is actually apply the organic materials to the floats, and it's not all flowers. While I was there, I saw flowers, chopped parsley, beans, oatmeal, white rice, poppy seeds, and other types of materials used on different float designs.

Since flowers are mostly what you see, I'll walk you through the process of using yellow straw flowers to decorate a large papier-mache flower that comprised part of the float design.

The first step is separating the flowers from the stem and putting them in boxes.

Next, the individual petals are stripped from the hull of the flower. Then you take scissors and cut those flower petals into even smaller pieces. The box on the left is what they look like before cutting, and the box on the right is the size when they're cut.

Needless to say, this is a challenge to do with the tips of the scissors jammed inside a bucket. Plus your fingers start to ache after a while because you're cutting a boatload of flower petals!

 

Once the flower petals are cut up, the real fun starts because you get to use glue! In this case, we were painting papier-mache flower forms with glue and covering them thousands of bits of straw flower petals. They lay plastic on the floor so you don't waste too much, because those flowers cost money. And once you get what didn't stick back in the box, the plastic makes clean-up a lot easier.

 

The hard part about these flowers is getting the edges completely covered. The forms are heavy, so if you have only one person working on a flower, it's hard to hold it up, paint on glue AND get the flowers to stick without having to sit the thing down, which is turn messes up the edges and you have to do them again. Jen and her Mom figured our early on it was more efficient as a two person job.

They turned out a pretty amazing finished product!

Keep in mind, these flowers are only ONE component of an enormous float, and we spent 7 hours working on just this one piece! All told, there are thousands of man hours that go into the finished product you see on parade day. And while sitting on a hard concrete floor covered in glue and bits of flowers may not be glamorous, this is truly one of the toughest jobs you'll ever love.

Here's to a bright and colorful New Year!

Sailing Away From 2010

Last night, I walked home from Staples Center after a Kings game in chilly weather with winds gusting up to 18 MPH. 

Most of the time the wind blew straight at my face, causing me to lower my head and lean forward to keep pushing my way home.  At times, the head wind was so strong it slowed my pace by half or even stopped me altogether.

Occasionally, the wind shifted 180 degrees and pushed at my back until I was moving too fast and trying to control my momentum.  Those bursts never lasted long, and while it was a relief to have some help walking a little more quickly, it was hard not being in control.  Plus, I spent my time worrying when the wind would shift another 180 degrees and resume it's attempts to slow my progress.

As it turns out, walking through last night's windstorm is a great metaphor for the year I had in 2010. 

Whether I was fighting conditions holding me back or struggling to control unwelcome forward momentum, everything was a battle.   I got caught up in the emotion of that struggle, and I made a lot of mistakes handling the challenges I faced -- in some cases major ones I'm still trying to completely repair.  I looked for places and people to blame.    Over the course of the year, that constant battle wore me down.  At one point, I wanted to give up completely.   I felt exhausted, uninspired and hopeless.  I lost myself, or at least my vision of who I want to be.

But I realized I DO have the power to find myself again.  Like a good sailor, I just need a plan to navigate and the strength to adjust my sails and tack around so the wind works for me, not against me.   If life is a journey and not a destination,  I still have a lot of sailing left in me.

I think they use champagne to christen boats, right?

Then toast with me as the next phase of my journey begins.  HAPPY NEW YEAR!