I don’t always talk about my medical issues...

...but when I do, I tell it all.

It hasn’t been a great medical year for me. It all began in February with an iris inflammation that I had trouble getting rid of, the steroid was raising the pressure in my eye, which meant a different medicine for a longer period of time. Around that time, the tooth that I had had a root canal on just six months earlier decided to act up. Then a persistent UTI, something I’d never had to deal with before, attacked me and did not want to let go, even after four rounds of antibiotics…but according to the urologist, I had been on too many antibiotics. (Ya think?) In the middle of that, my knee started really bothering me, so much so that I was limping around (and making plenty of sound effects)…and before I could make it to the doctor to see about my knee, my heart decided to run amok. “Amok” as in beating fast and furious, and for an added attention-getting measure, it would toss in a few definite skips. It started in the middle of the night, and I may have had a panic attack because I convinced myself that I might be dying, so I made Ole Boy take me to the ER…which ended up being an all-night/good-part-of-the-morning ordeal. In all of the testing, they found my d-dimer was elevated (which led to CT scans and ultrasounds to be sure I had no blood clots), and that my aorta is enlarged. 

I had never heard of d-dimer…have you? I had to make him repeat it twice, and even then I didn’t understand. That’s what Google is for. Good ol’ Dr. Google.

It all sounds about as serious as a heart attack, doesn’t it? My knee is bone-on-bone; got a shot for that, which helped a lot. After all the antibiotics, the tooth is doing better. I am on a beta-blocker, which is helping my palpitations/rapid heartbeat, and I am scheduled for a stress test and echocardiogram next week. The enlarged aorta (aneurysm) is not enough to worry about (righhht, because the word “aneurysm” isn’t scary at all), but will be watched.

I just wore myself out telling you all of this.

Thank God for insurance! I cannot imagine not having it. I have not enjoyed all the co-pays and deductibles (I had used up all my medical flex spending money by midsummer). In fact, I really haven’t enjoyed any of this…which reminds me of an Andy Griffith episode (Aunt Bee’s Medicine Man) where Andy told Aunt Bee, “Augusta always enjoyed poor health as long as I can remember.”

Some of the above (the story, not Andy Griffith) may explain why I didn’t write very much over the summer. That, and laziness. But, some days I felt really rough, and a constant heart rate of 98 tends to make me extremely tired. I’ve used more sick hours this year than I have in all the other ten years of my employment combined. There has been a lot of prayer for me, for which I am eternally grateful.

If you toss a few episodes of what can only be described as panic attacks in the middle of the night…you now have my year in 533+ words.

And that’s enough for one post, don’t you think?

When I began this post, I had more to say than just all my issues.

It will keep.