Normal Activites
I'll get back to the daily breakdown of Zoo Camp/Cousin Camp soon, but today, I wanted to go ahead and post this.
The first week of July, I started to get these little flutters in the center of my chest. No big deal really - they don't bother me and they're not accompanied by dizziness or fatigue (well, at least not any more fatigue than I normally have after spending the day chasing the inmates here at the insane asylum or is it the other way around - am I the inmate? hmmmm). Anyway, they were happening pretty frequently on the 3rd of July, so when Steve got home from work that day, he suggested I go on to the Urgent Care clinic to get it checked out. I waited a while and was finally seen by a nurse. When I told her what was happening, she said she had to check with the doctor. She came back a few minutes later and told me that I needed to go to the Emergency Room because it could be something wrong with my heart and they weren't equipped to handle it. All righty then. Just how I wanted to spend the night before the 4th of July. Well, to make a long boring story into a short boring story: I spent 12 hours in the emergency room (not because they were doing stuff to me during those 12 hours, but because I kept getting bumped in the priority list and I was totally fine with that because the more I got bumped the more convinced I became that nothing was seriously wrong with me or I'd be going up on the priority list, not down) and the doctor popped in and said: "Your blood work looks great. Your EKG is fine. I think you're just having some palpitations brought on by stress, or caffeine or lack of sleep." Ya think? He told me to follow up with my Primary Care Physician in 2-10 days. I waited 14, 'cause, you know, I have such important things to do that I couldn't fit in an appointment before then (you know, important stuff like searching the internet for what Halloween costumes I want to make this year and trying, unsuccessfully, three times to make these hamburger buns from scratch). The morning before the doctor's appointment, I took a walk. And I decided about halfway through the walk, that I would run several blocks. Ummm, yeah, I'm not sure where that thought came from - I don't run - never have, and after that grand adventure, don't know that I ever will. I thought it would be good for my blood pressure. If that sounds ridiculous, well, I realize that, but that's the way my mind works. When I was pregnant with the girls, I'd schedule my doctor's appointments for early in the morning and then wait until after the appointment to eat breakfast so I'd weigh less. Of course, I ate like a pig between the appointments and as Steve would always point out, one meal isn't going to change what the scale says. And one run before a doctor's appointment probably isn't going to do much for your blood pressure, but, hey, it's my mind and I'm kind of fond of the way it works, even if it is slightly off kilter.
So, I get to the doctor's office and they do the usual stuff: weight, temp, pulse, and blood pressure (mine was 100/68, so maybe I'm not so nuts, huh?). Then, the doctor comes in and listens to my heart and asks me about the palpitations. I told him they had eased up some until the day before when I started to get nervous about my doctor's appointment. He said, "Well, I hear think I hear a sinus arrhythmia with the stethoscope, so I'm going to go ahead and do another EKG." Okay, at this point I start to get a little concerned. The nurse comes and does the EKG and then says the doctor will be back in. The doctor returns and says "Yep, a sinus arrhythmia is showing on the EKG and it's also showing that you have a possible electrical conduction problem with your heart." My eyes grow huge. He looks at me, somewhat kindly, and tries to explain what's happening. He says, "Neither of these things are a big deal at all - we don't do surgery for things like this anyway." My eyes still stayed huge - 'cause I'm thinking electrical conduction problems are probably not good. I'm a computer programmer - if my computer has an electrical conduction problem, it's in big trouble - big, big trouble....like it doesn't work anymore. And I'm thinking that my heart is probably a bit more important than my computer...He says to go about my normal life and that he's going to set me up with an appointment with a cardiologist and order a 24-hour Holter monitor test(a little ambulatory EKG machine that will record what my electrically-impaired heart is doing for a full day). So, I'm thinking - if it isn't a big deal, why do I have to see a cardiologist and why do I have to have some kind of weird 24-hour test?
The next day, the people in charge of the Holter monitors at the hospital call and try to schedule an appointment. The first one they have available is for July 28th - when we're going to be out of town. The next one they have is for August 11th. I ask if it's okay to wait that long. The kind lady says, "Well, it doesn't say stat - it's just a routine test, so that will be just fine." More than anything the doctor said to me, this one little sentence by the appointment lady allays my fear that my heart is going to just go electrically haywire at any moment. If the doctor even thought something like that, he'd have put STAT on the order for the test. Wouldn't he?
The day after that, the cardiologist calls with an appointment. It's set for August 8th (three weeks later). Again, I'm relieved by this. Steve & I went to this appointment last Friday. The cardiologist was a kind, slightly built Indian man. I was immediately comfortable with him. Steve said it is because he's Indian (for those of you who don't know, I have a degree in Comparative Area Studies with an emphasis on South Asia - along with a certificate in Hindi) and that may well be true, but he was soft-spoken and very reassuring. He said that the results of the EKG in the doctor's office are normal variants, nothing at all to be concerned about. He said to go ahead and do the Holter test and that he'd schedule me for an Echocardiogram just to make sure nothing was going on with my heart's structure. I left that appointment feeling a lot better (and the palpitations, which had picked up after my appointment with my primary care doctor, actually started to ease up again).
Yesterday, I went to the hospital to pick up my Holter monitor. It was a painless process. It took about 45 minutes to do the paperwork and about 30 seconds for the lady to hook up the seven leads, set the timer on the monitor and give me my instructions. She told me to go about my normal daily activities and handed me a little patient diary to fill out every two hours, listing what activities I'm doing and if I'm having any symptoms. The little diary has examples of activities that you could list: walking, sitting, running, urinating, bowel movements, sexual intercourse, taking medication, etc.
After about 30 minutes, it is obvious to me that the Holter monitor was not designed nor was the activity diary written for a stay a home mommy of two young children. Painfully obvious....Here's the way my activity dairy reads:
11:45 - Leave hospital with lovely red Holter monitor and ugly black leads all over my chest. Gracie says, "Mommy! We can't go anywhere - what if someone SEES you?"
12:30 - We pick up Burger King for lunch. When I twist around, in my seatbelt, to hand the girls one of their chicken tenders, the left lead at the top of my chest pops off. I snap it back on. As soon as we get home, I call the Holter Monitor place and they say it's not a problem
12:45 - While I'm changing Abigail's diaper, she notices the whole Holter setup. She says, "What yat?" and starts kicking at the leads - yeah, I'm sure that will provide some interesting results on the readout. Then she says "Button" and tries to pull the leads off
1:30 - I'm trying to finish up a little work at the computer. Gracie comes into the room, talking about shells. I ask her where Abigail is and as I ask this, I hear a kind of splashing noise coming from the bathroom. Gracie says, "Oh, she's in the bathroom drinking out of the toilet. Don't worry, I closed the door." I jumped up and ran into the bathroom. She wasn't drinking the water - she had her whole head submerged in the thing. She was swimming! When I walked in she popped up and said, "TaDa!" just like she does in the pool when she comes up. Now, explain to me what activity I'm supposed to list that under. Was I working? Was I watching sports? Who knows?
3:45 - I'm talking on the phone to one of my contract employers. I finish and turn around and see this:
I rescue her from the top of the dresser, put a diaper on her, and wonder again what I should put down in my diary.
5:00 - the girls and I head out for a walk. They're not used to being inside for this much of the day, so they are acting, to put it mildly, insane. I spend most of the time chasing them from one side of the street to the other, and pulling Abigail out of multiple mud puddles.
Finally, I've had enough and decide that, by golly, they are going to ride in the stroller so I can put "walking" on my activity diary. I put Abigail into her seat of the double jogger or at least I try to. She's bucking and hollering like a calf being led to slaughter. She's mad and she'll do anything she can to avoid being put in the seat. So, she grabs at the holter monitor thingy and pulls. As hard as she can. And pops off five of the seven leads. Five different-colored leads that I have no idea where to put back.
5:20 - we get back to the house. I call the Holter monitor place (again) and tell them what happened and they walk me through where each one goes.
6:00 - Steve gets home and we have supper. I decide that the only way I'm going to get through this whole monitoring thing is to sit completely still and not pick up either of the girls until it's time to remove the thing.
8:45 - I'm exhausted - I go to sleep
2:45 a.m. - I wake up from a very scary nightmare. I check on Gracie, because the scary nightmare is about her. She's fine but my heart is still racing, like it would after a roller coaster ride. I'm not sure what activity to list on the diary, because Maternal Terror for your oldest child is not an activity option
3:15 - I fall back into a somewhat fitful sleep, interrupted by several more bad dreams.
5:15 - I wake up to the sound of a little voice saying, "Mommy! I went pee-pee in the bed..." I change Gracie and get her settled back down for a little more sleep and go ahead and get up to get some work done.
It's now 10:30 a.m. and I have another hour and fifteen minutes before I can take the monitor off (and take a nice warm, relaxing bath - okay, semi-relaxing since I'm sure the girls will be joining me). So far this morning has been rather peaceful - with the exception of the fact that the girls have destroyed the living room and I didn't get anywhere near the work done I need to, but peacefulness is relative, don't you think?
I'm thinking of turning this blog entry in as my Holter Monitor Activity diary. I'm fairly sure if I do, they'll be calling me for a psychiatric consult fairly quickly...
The first week of July, I started to get these little flutters in the center of my chest. No big deal really - they don't bother me and they're not accompanied by dizziness or fatigue (well, at least not any more fatigue than I normally have after spending the day chasing the inmates here at the insane asylum or is it the other way around - am I the inmate? hmmmm). Anyway, they were happening pretty frequently on the 3rd of July, so when Steve got home from work that day, he suggested I go on to the Urgent Care clinic to get it checked out. I waited a while and was finally seen by a nurse. When I told her what was happening, she said she had to check with the doctor. She came back a few minutes later and told me that I needed to go to the Emergency Room because it could be something wrong with my heart and they weren't equipped to handle it. All righty then. Just how I wanted to spend the night before the 4th of July. Well, to make a long boring story into a short boring story: I spent 12 hours in the emergency room (not because they were doing stuff to me during those 12 hours, but because I kept getting bumped in the priority list and I was totally fine with that because the more I got bumped the more convinced I became that nothing was seriously wrong with me or I'd be going up on the priority list, not down) and the doctor popped in and said: "Your blood work looks great. Your EKG is fine. I think you're just having some palpitations brought on by stress, or caffeine or lack of sleep." Ya think? He told me to follow up with my Primary Care Physician in 2-10 days. I waited 14, 'cause, you know, I have such important things to do that I couldn't fit in an appointment before then (you know, important stuff like searching the internet for what Halloween costumes I want to make this year and trying, unsuccessfully, three times to make these hamburger buns from scratch). The morning before the doctor's appointment, I took a walk. And I decided about halfway through the walk, that I would run several blocks. Ummm, yeah, I'm not sure where that thought came from - I don't run - never have, and after that grand adventure, don't know that I ever will. I thought it would be good for my blood pressure. If that sounds ridiculous, well, I realize that, but that's the way my mind works. When I was pregnant with the girls, I'd schedule my doctor's appointments for early in the morning and then wait until after the appointment to eat breakfast so I'd weigh less. Of course, I ate like a pig between the appointments and as Steve would always point out, one meal isn't going to change what the scale says. And one run before a doctor's appointment probably isn't going to do much for your blood pressure, but, hey, it's my mind and I'm kind of fond of the way it works, even if it is slightly off kilter.
So, I get to the doctor's office and they do the usual stuff: weight, temp, pulse, and blood pressure (mine was 100/68, so maybe I'm not so nuts, huh?). Then, the doctor comes in and listens to my heart and asks me about the palpitations. I told him they had eased up some until the day before when I started to get nervous about my doctor's appointment. He said, "Well, I hear think I hear a sinus arrhythmia with the stethoscope, so I'm going to go ahead and do another EKG." Okay, at this point I start to get a little concerned. The nurse comes and does the EKG and then says the doctor will be back in. The doctor returns and says "Yep, a sinus arrhythmia is showing on the EKG and it's also showing that you have a possible electrical conduction problem with your heart." My eyes grow huge. He looks at me, somewhat kindly, and tries to explain what's happening. He says, "Neither of these things are a big deal at all - we don't do surgery for things like this anyway." My eyes still stayed huge - 'cause I'm thinking electrical conduction problems are probably not good. I'm a computer programmer - if my computer has an electrical conduction problem, it's in big trouble - big, big trouble....like it doesn't work anymore. And I'm thinking that my heart is probably a bit more important than my computer...He says to go about my normal life and that he's going to set me up with an appointment with a cardiologist and order a 24-hour Holter monitor test(a little ambulatory EKG machine that will record what my electrically-impaired heart is doing for a full day). So, I'm thinking - if it isn't a big deal, why do I have to see a cardiologist and why do I have to have some kind of weird 24-hour test?
The next day, the people in charge of the Holter monitors at the hospital call and try to schedule an appointment. The first one they have available is for July 28th - when we're going to be out of town. The next one they have is for August 11th. I ask if it's okay to wait that long. The kind lady says, "Well, it doesn't say stat - it's just a routine test, so that will be just fine." More than anything the doctor said to me, this one little sentence by the appointment lady allays my fear that my heart is going to just go electrically haywire at any moment. If the doctor even thought something like that, he'd have put STAT on the order for the test. Wouldn't he?
The day after that, the cardiologist calls with an appointment. It's set for August 8th (three weeks later). Again, I'm relieved by this. Steve & I went to this appointment last Friday. The cardiologist was a kind, slightly built Indian man. I was immediately comfortable with him. Steve said it is because he's Indian (for those of you who don't know, I have a degree in Comparative Area Studies with an emphasis on South Asia - along with a certificate in Hindi) and that may well be true, but he was soft-spoken and very reassuring. He said that the results of the EKG in the doctor's office are normal variants, nothing at all to be concerned about. He said to go ahead and do the Holter test and that he'd schedule me for an Echocardiogram just to make sure nothing was going on with my heart's structure. I left that appointment feeling a lot better (and the palpitations, which had picked up after my appointment with my primary care doctor, actually started to ease up again).
Yesterday, I went to the hospital to pick up my Holter monitor. It was a painless process. It took about 45 minutes to do the paperwork and about 30 seconds for the lady to hook up the seven leads, set the timer on the monitor and give me my instructions. She told me to go about my normal daily activities and handed me a little patient diary to fill out every two hours, listing what activities I'm doing and if I'm having any symptoms. The little diary has examples of activities that you could list: walking, sitting, running, urinating, bowel movements, sexual intercourse, taking medication, etc.
After about 30 minutes, it is obvious to me that the Holter monitor was not designed nor was the activity diary written for a stay a home mommy of two young children. Painfully obvious....Here's the way my activity dairy reads:
11:45 - Leave hospital with lovely red Holter monitor and ugly black leads all over my chest. Gracie says, "Mommy! We can't go anywhere - what if someone SEES you?"
12:30 - We pick up Burger King for lunch. When I twist around, in my seatbelt, to hand the girls one of their chicken tenders, the left lead at the top of my chest pops off. I snap it back on. As soon as we get home, I call the Holter Monitor place and they say it's not a problem
12:45 - While I'm changing Abigail's diaper, she notices the whole Holter setup. She says, "What yat?" and starts kicking at the leads - yeah, I'm sure that will provide some interesting results on the readout. Then she says "Button" and tries to pull the leads off
1:30 - I'm trying to finish up a little work at the computer. Gracie comes into the room, talking about shells. I ask her where Abigail is and as I ask this, I hear a kind of splashing noise coming from the bathroom. Gracie says, "Oh, she's in the bathroom drinking out of the toilet. Don't worry, I closed the door." I jumped up and ran into the bathroom. She wasn't drinking the water - she had her whole head submerged in the thing. She was swimming! When I walked in she popped up and said, "TaDa!" just like she does in the pool when she comes up. Now, explain to me what activity I'm supposed to list that under. Was I working? Was I watching sports? Who knows?
3:45 - I'm talking on the phone to one of my contract employers. I finish and turn around and see this:
I rescue her from the top of the dresser, put a diaper on her, and wonder again what I should put down in my diary.
5:00 - the girls and I head out for a walk. They're not used to being inside for this much of the day, so they are acting, to put it mildly, insane. I spend most of the time chasing them from one side of the street to the other, and pulling Abigail out of multiple mud puddles.
Finally, I've had enough and decide that, by golly, they are going to ride in the stroller so I can put "walking" on my activity diary. I put Abigail into her seat of the double jogger or at least I try to. She's bucking and hollering like a calf being led to slaughter. She's mad and she'll do anything she can to avoid being put in the seat. So, she grabs at the holter monitor thingy and pulls. As hard as she can. And pops off five of the seven leads. Five different-colored leads that I have no idea where to put back.
5:20 - we get back to the house. I call the Holter monitor place (again) and tell them what happened and they walk me through where each one goes.
6:00 - Steve gets home and we have supper. I decide that the only way I'm going to get through this whole monitoring thing is to sit completely still and not pick up either of the girls until it's time to remove the thing.
8:45 - I'm exhausted - I go to sleep
2:45 a.m. - I wake up from a very scary nightmare. I check on Gracie, because the scary nightmare is about her. She's fine but my heart is still racing, like it would after a roller coaster ride. I'm not sure what activity to list on the diary, because Maternal Terror for your oldest child is not an activity option
3:15 - I fall back into a somewhat fitful sleep, interrupted by several more bad dreams.
5:15 - I wake up to the sound of a little voice saying, "Mommy! I went pee-pee in the bed..." I change Gracie and get her settled back down for a little more sleep and go ahead and get up to get some work done.
It's now 10:30 a.m. and I have another hour and fifteen minutes before I can take the monitor off (and take a nice warm, relaxing bath - okay, semi-relaxing since I'm sure the girls will be joining me). So far this morning has been rather peaceful - with the exception of the fact that the girls have destroyed the living room and I didn't get anywhere near the work done I need to, but peacefulness is relative, don't you think?
I'm thinking of turning this blog entry in as my Holter Monitor Activity diary. I'm fairly sure if I do, they'll be calling me for a psychiatric consult fairly quickly...
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