Wild Week

[sal_amanda]

This has been an interesting week.  It started with me chopping my hair off and the girl not doing entirely what I asked and me ending up with a suburban housewife hairdo.  Then it moved on to a big power outage on a day that I really needed electricity.  And finally culminated in a trip to the ER thanks to John's freaky heart condition.

Allow me to elaborate on that last item.  John has this occasional irregular heartbeat that can also speed up to ungodly rates.  We had a trip to the Sisters ER a couple years ago with a very nasty case of it and that pretty much sucked.  He's been taking meds ever since then.  There's no real cause of it.  It's not necessarily dangerous unless it goes on for a very, very long time.  It's more of a nuisance, according to the doctors.  He's had a few random attacks of it here and there, but his cardiologist would just have him double up the meds for a bit until it resolved itself, which it always did.  

John hasn't been sleeping well lately, for unknown reasons.  He wakes up and then can't get back to sleep for a couple hours.  That may have triggered it, but maybe not.  In any case, he was short of breath for a couple days and had chest congestion, but we were thinking it was just his lungs or a cold or something.  In any case, he barely slept at all Wednesday night because of it so he figured he'd check in with his doctor.  His doctor, though, was on vacation.  We've been meaning to switch from this crappy doctor anyway and now we really wish he had.  The guy covering for his doctor never got back to us.  Nice.

So when the urgent care place nearby opened at 3, John went there.  That's where he went the first time this happened and they recognized it again and called his cardiologist to find out what hospital they wanted him sent to.  This time he went to ECMC.  So my mom came to hang with Nora and I went there to meet up with John.  We were really impressed with ECMC on the same level as we were not with Sisters the last time.  The doctors were all very nice and actually pretty funny.  The nurses were very nice.  They had some nifty high-tech stuff.  And it being the local public hospital, the clientele was interesting.  If the police pick someone up that needs the ER, they go to ECMC, so that was fun at times.  Otherwise, the ER is a pretty boring place.

They put John on a drip of his medication, but it didn't entirely do the trick.  So they did this thing they did last time where they basically shock his heart back into its proper rhythm.  Now at Sisters, they made me leave as they were worried about how I'd handle it.  This time, they were thinking about having me leave, but I asked if I could stay.  Seriously, I just wanted to see it, and it was interesting to see, since they did let me stay.  That did the job immediately, so instead of admitting him, they made sure it was staying steady for a couple hours and let him go home.

We didn't leave until almost midnight, which ironically, we didn't even stay up until for New Year's this year because of la bebe.  

Anyway.  Guess it's good to get this kind of craziness out of the way this week since I start my internship Monday.  I've been working later shifts for so many years, I can't remember what it's like to be anywhere that early, and who knows how it'll work with getting Nora somewhere on time.  Ha!

Comments

[kristyfrey.livejournal.com]

WOW! My dad has a similar rythym issue and he has to go in every year of two to get it "reset", but my dad is 73 and has had every conceivable heart issues since his forties. John is so young! Hopefully this won't affect his health.

I was growing my hair out but just chopped it off again. Long hair is too much work!

[sal_amanda]

My hair is so thick and when it was as long as it was, it took forever to dry and it just hung there, even with layers. Since I want to look like a grownup for my internship, I figured it was time to chop.

My cousin actually had the same heart thing a few years ago so I guess age isn't necessarily a factor. Lucky us. ;)

[busybusymama.livejournal.com]

How scary about John. I guess, though, that if the cardiologist says it's an okay thing to live with, then you don't have too much to worry about...

Sorry about the hair. The thing about hair is that it grows back, and you won't look like a suburban housewife for too long. :)

[sal_amanda]

I figure just because I am a suburban housewife doesn't mean that I want to look like one. ;) It's not a bad haircut. Just not what I was aiming for. I figure by Nora's birthday, it will be a little longer and I can try again to get more what I wanted.

There is one procedure we can do for John's heart where they go through a vein in his leg and burn something or other. It's about 70% effective so the cardiologist has taken a wait and see approach for now. We're at the point where we think we'll look into it.

[i-am-solid.livejournal.com]

Oh goodness.

The good thing is that John already has a cardiologist which is nice, and he seems to not be an idiot.

If you don't want to look like a suburban housewife, get a few streaks of a color not found in nature - that's always worked for me.

[sal_amanda]

I'm trying to avoid the coloring anymore these days because I find the upkeep annoying. I'm kind of confused as to when my hair got to be this dark. Granted, I'd been doing highlights on top of highlights pretty much since we got married until right before I got pregnant when I had them dye it to match my roots, but in five years, how did it get this dark? I'm stumped.