is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Tipping Over To The Left.
The Democrats took over the House and the Senate, and Rumsfeld resigned! What?! Wow.
Hans Blix (TCNTUNWI) is spending the night at the vet tonight, which is sad for me, and sadder for him. I took him in because after his weighty turn this fall he started losing weight and refusing to eat, and hanging out in the bathtub (always a sign of something wrong in a cat). Precipitous and swift, this fall from high on the hog to manorexia! So I took him to the vet and he's very dehydrated so they are hydrating him right now. I guess he's in a cat-bathtub sipping evian with cucumber slices on his cat-eyelids? No. He's miserable in a cat-storage container somewhere in a vet office that smells like 1million cats, with a bag of intravenous fluids pumping into his back and giving him baggy cat-elbows. And he's sadly mewling at his bad fortune, and probably scared and shaky. And perhaps thinking about savoring my blood when he's next within reach.
It's so strange to be in a house without an animal in it!
And of course this all costs lots of money that I do not have. Will I ever not be worried about money? Ever?! Aaaaanyway,
I have yet to do all the typing it would take for me to explain to you my own latest health issue, having to do with me having some sort of heart valve condition called Barlow's Syndrome, which probably isn't very serious (tests done later in the month, but it doesn't tend to be life-threatening). But since both Hans Blix and I have been declared dehydrated, and since both Hans Blix and I like to drink water, I've started to have environmental paranoia, like maybe there's something wrong with the water system in ye olde apartment house? Or soylent green is people? It's people!? I'll keep you posted.
In the meantime, don't worry about my heart valve. From what I can tell, lots of people have mitral valve prolapse, and then some special people, like myself, have that and other symptoms, and that gets called Barlow's Syndrome. Let's just say that apparently my heart is murmury, clicky, and semi-leaky. And apparently this doesn't become a problem until you get dizzy spells and chest pains and fatigue and and then it seems like the whole world is tipping over to the left (and I don't mean that metaphorically, or politically, though, whoa, the political world in the U.S. IS tipping over to the left...). I told Evany about my murmury leaky heart and she said, "you mean you're sentimental?" Pause. "You mean that's why you cried at Centerstage?" Yes. That's why. I have a medical excuse. I'm sorry, I can't participate in physical education today.
Actually, I think she's the one who cried at Centerstage (though I have, admittedly, watched the shit out of Centerstage more than once, and I do not apologize!). However, I cried watching Desperate Housewives the other night, and this time it wasn't because I couldn't believe how stupid it was.
So, the thing that is so satisfying about having a heart condition (ha) is that, starting in roughly 1989 I started going to my doctor and complaining of chest pains and dizziness and palpitations and skipped heartbeats with loss of breath. Plus I had seriously terrible migraine headaches. My doctor, after listening to my heart and doing some tests, told me nothing was wrong. I kept going back. He then basically told me that I was a hysterical woman. And not in a kind way. I gave up.
The chest pains, palpitations, occasional loss of breath, that never stopped.
Over the past summer I had a lot of dizziness, headaches, and a couple of almost-fainting episodes (during which it felt like the whole world was tipping over to the left!) that were freaky (remember when I almost fainted driving a car home from Philadelphia on the day of my east coast birthday party?), so, I finally made an appointment last week and went to talk to my doctor here about it. Lucky for me my general practitioner is a retired cardiologist. He looked at my medical history and listened to me and had an instant hypothesis as to my problem.
This "syndrome" tends to be something you're born with but doesn�t become a problem until the early 20s (precisely when I first went to SUCKY doctor). Anyway, nonsucky doctor actually spent MORE THAN AN HOUR examining me and talking to me about the problem. MORE THAN AN HOUR. How often does that happen? He even used all kinds of metaphors for what was happening, describing my heart valve as if it were a parachute with uneven strings, etc., to help me understand. I was almost late to class!
So for most of that afternoon last week when I got the preliminary diagnosis I felt a combination of relief and anger. Anger about the Sucky Doctor, relieved to know I�m not crazy. I mean, even without Sucky Doctors, it�s funny how it is IMPOSSIBLE not to think you might be crazy when you think there�s something wrong with your heart, because once you feel something strange happening in your heart, your anxiety over it, as you sit there trying to detect what is wrong, makes your heart feel crazy-wrong, but that�s all anxiety, which covers over whatever physical state you, in your non-doctorly way, are sitting there trying to detect. And so on. A vicious circle.
Speaking of circles, here we have another funny circular regress: apparently the syndrome can make you feel fatigue or tiredness. I�ve been extra-tired much of the time for awhile now, so I�ve been drinking more caffeine, but caffeine makes you dehydrated and, it turns out, being dehydrated makes the condition worse. Which makes you more tired. I guess I�ll have to find a new solution. However, apparently I am so dehydrated that no amount off caffeine could explain it. Still, I have cut my caffeine intake way down over the past week and I feel A LOT better, instead of worse�which is often the reaction a body has to less caffeine.
About Sucky Doctor. It�s not that he didn�t find the problem. That�s not why he�s sucky. Apparently the problem is located in a part of my heart that is atypical and can only be heard when I�m laying down, etc. So the reason why Sucky Doctor is Sucky is that he never once considered that I might NOT be a hypochondriac. He refused to refer me to a cardiologist or another doctor. And I had a medical plan that didn�t let me get a second opinion without being referred to do so. You know how it goes. Plus I was young. But still, ever since 1989 I�ve occasionally composed angry-letters-in-my-head to Sucky Doctor because of how he treated me.
Today, however, let's concentrate our good wishes on Hans Blix (TCNTUNWI), that he is now well-hydrated, and not sick with anything dire.
12:18 a.m. - November 09, 2006
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