In case anyone was wondering why I have not been keeping up on my blog, it's because I have been in the hospital.
It turned out to be nothing serious, but I woke up on Friday morning with a feeling of heaviness or pressure on my chest, with that same feeling radiating down my arms and up into my jaw, which seemed to me to be all the symptoms that they warn you about for "Heart Attack", so it really scared us. We discussed it, and decided we better go to the hospital and have it checked out.
We arrived at St. Boniface Hospital emergency room around 8:00 am and I was immediately rushed in for an EKG and blood tests. Within 10 minutes I was on a gurney hooked up to all the latest technologies. Which is even more frightening, when you realize that they think this is serious, but also reassuring that I'm glad I'm here, if it is this serious.
So, there I lay on that gurney for the next 16 hours being poked, prodded questioned and examined by "everyone and his uncle", that passed by. In that time I had at least 6 EKGs, 10 "blood lettings" and a thousand questions asked. I was xrayed, stethoscoped, poked and prodded in more places than I care to mention, with still no answers. With time and/or the drugs they had given me, my symptoms had passed, but my heart rate and blood pressure were still a little high and they didn't have an answer for that or as to what had set the symptoms off in the first place, so they decided to admit me to hospital for observation.
I know we never have a choice, but if we did, my advice would be, "Never get sick on a Friday." All weekend, the poking and prodding, testing and questioning continued, but the places that do the more in depth testing are all closed on the weekend. Plus the hospital is very, very boring and the food is atrocious. But there I sat, enduring, reading and walking the halls. Then finally on Monday, they got me on the "Cancellation List" for a stress test with Ecocardiography, which is basically a sonogram of your heart then a treadmill workout then quickly another sonogram and see what happens.
I really pushed it and was able to get my heart rate way up there, (higher than I think they expected for an old 72 year old lady) with no ill effects showing on the follow up sonogram. They told me, "I passed with flying colours." So, the minute I got back to my room, the cardiologist came into my room and said, "Why don't you go home?" He had just finally received the copies of previous testing they had done on me a few years ago and he said that a couple of anomalies that they were a little concerned about have been there for years and my test results were great. "So, go home, relax, and yes, you can travel."
So, I'm home and finalizing my plans and packing for our trip to Florida next week.
GLAD THAT'S OVER WITH
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