Here we go...again

4am(ish) and the little frog began to dance.  Maybe he just didn't know anyone was watching this time? haha

And just for fun... you know, this particular cartoon of MJF actually kind of sums up my experience so far, and.... the ending, rather reminds me of Dr. O, my EP! *snort* lol

Hey, gotta have a little fun, even if you feel like dookie. ;p  And besides, laughter has been known to trigger my AF, and... it's also been known to convert me right back into normal sinus rhythm! ;p  So let's have some fun!!!

FDA clears first smartphone-based device to detect atrial fibrillation

Wow....  This is really something!  Not much to post about, because the article pretty much speaks for itself.  Technology is, well, really coming around.

FDA Clears first smartphone-based device to detect atrial fibrillation

That propofol fog and the power of three

Well, I had my post ablation follow-up with my cardiologist today and discovered some interesting information.  Apparently, when Dr. O came in to speak to me after the procedure, while still in a propofol fog, and while he was filling me in on the details of the procedure, how it went, what he did, findings, etc.... I missed something.  Apparently I had, not two ablations as I had first thought, but three.

As it turns out, I had Atrial Fibrillation, Supraventricular Tachycardia, and Atrial Flutter.  Many folks confuse Afib and AFL, both of which can mimic one another as far as symptoms go, but.. they are different in many ways.  Either way, seems I had a lot more going on than I thought.  And... due to my lovely 5 day stint with... well, one or more of those arrhythmias, I get to wear an event monitor for a couple of weeks.  Not a full 30 days, thankfully... rather allergic to the adhesive on the monitor leads.

And then there was the discussion of increasing the beta blocker.  :(  *sigh*  Dr. A is, I hope, just going to monitor things for a couple of weeks in hopes that the 5 day dance-a-thon was just part of the healing process and not signs of possibly needing an ablation do-over in the future.  If things are more active than they should be, she may increase my carvedilol dosage (noooooooo!!!), which she rather threatened to do today.  Thankfully, she didn't do that, at least not today.  We will see what tomorrow brings.

What a day.  And... I bet that little froggy is going to be very quiet, because that's what he does most of the time when being watched.  And when this monitor comes off..... lol  ;p

Anyway, today has just been a little off.  Weird.  And just... 'off.'

Maybe tomorrow I'll talk about the 'Peacockasaurus.'  Yeah... not kidding about that.

"Skitch"? Seriously? rofl!

Wow.  I must say that's a first.  Someone was hateful to me in a dream, and I stood up to them... and called her a ... skitch.  *snort*  A word I know but have never 'used.'  I can't even remember the last time I got into a confrontation or argument with a female, much less called her a name.  But... in a dream?  Never.  Ultra weird.  Although, I did have someone else on my mind who was being bullied. Still... kind of silly when you think about it.

Dreams are so freakin' weird.

Now, it's about 8:53 am and I'm 50% low on my daily dose of caffein (that's 1/2 of 2 cups lol. Hey, it still counts!).  So if you're expecting anything interesting here, I'm betting you're going to be deeply disappointed.  I'm just not with it this morning at all.  And... I've a lot to do still.  First follow-up with my cardiologist, and I have to pick up something gorgeous for the living room.  This basically means I have to work on psyching myself up to believe I actually have energy today.  Yeah... I still have a way to go with the recovery, and some days are still pretty rough.

Anyhoo....

I guess I'll wind up the morning with Pandora, coffee (maybe I'll cheat a bit and have an extra cup), do a little housework, then go for the shower and doing my hair routine....

Ugh... and I still have to eat something to take the ole heart meds.  :/  Yuck.  I've become repulsed by the idea of eating in the morning.  How nice it would be to be taken off those meds and told I'm totally done with it all.  Yeah, but who am I kidding?  I would have to lie to my cardiologist and not tell her about my heart's 5 day dance-a-thon.  I know better.  Okay... guess I'll just have to suck it up, be honest, and tell all.

But hey!.... I get to come home and put that painting in the living room, and move the red umbrella painting in the bedroom (will look SO much better in there).... Color, light, shadow, beautiful things....  It's the little things, you know.

I'm such a girl.

"It was CONSTANT for FIVE DAYS??" ((oopsy))

Yeah, well, I promised to those I know with AF that I would update on a couple of things, and I did forget.  So here it is.  More specifically... the "5 day episode."

Last night as I spoke with the folks at the lab I learned that the 5 day long episode was most likely AF and not just some freak run-on event of ectopic beats.  Yeah, yeah... I knew that ectopic beats are something that happen on occasion, once in a while, just an extra, premature beat here and there.  And while those PVCs can happen often, they're not constant.  I guess maybe I just told myself that to avoid two things: 1) $150 ER visit (because I simply didn't want to incur the cost because I excepted this even to stop on its own), and 2) having to go through cardioversion via medication or electricity/shock.  I'm not scared, just didn't want to mess with it.  And frankly, my arrhythmia events normally stop on their own.

Yes, this time it went on for 5 days.  Yes, I was supposed to address it if it went on beyond 6 hours.  However, for every hour that passed I believed it would stop on its own.

Now in a previous post I did say I won't be doing that again.  It sucked, and it sucked for a day and a half after it converted on its own.  But... I also learned last night that T had no idea that it was "constant."  He was under the impression it was intermittent/on and off.  Oops.  I wasn't in bad trouble, and he wasn't angry.  But.. he wasn't real happy with me either.

I reassured him that I wasn't going to let it go past a few hours again... IF... it ever happened again at all.  And it may not ever happen again.

So... for those of you reading.... please don't do what I did!  Remember what AF is, and remember that the longer blood continues to pool in your atria that you're risking a clot forming, and even when blood pools for a brief period of time (such as in short bursts of AF)... you risk clot formation, which means you risk having a stroke!

I'm not sure why I allowed myself to believe that it couldn't possibly be AF.  Maybe it was because of the ablation.  I think perhaps that's most likely what I was thinking.  But if this happens to you, don't do like I did and assume.  Just call your EP or cardiologist, or just go to the ER.  But don't ignore it.  Go by whatever the instructions were that you were given when you had your ablation.

Okay.  I've done my part.....

Oh yeah... No sleep study last night

Had to put off the sleep study.  Then... of course today was the phone call and the well-meaning person on the phone telling me that because I have AFib (ablation or not) that I'm at a super high risk of heart attack and stroke, etc...etc...etc.  I already knew this, but... the rules are theirs, not mine.  No sense in going through all the gory details, but it is what it is.  And frankly, their calling today of all days, and with all the crap going on at this very moment... I really could care less about all the 'risk' involved with possible sleep issues and AF.  But I bit my tongue and let her talk and thanked her kindly for her concern.

eh.  It's really been one of those days.  Been a while.

That's all I have to say at the moment.  I'm sure there will be something more substantial later.  I pretty much unloaded on LJ.. and there wasn't even enough left in my to copy and paste anything here.

..........

Dang bad dream. Where the hell did that come from?

....well, anyway.  That was weird waking up after THAT.  Wasn't a nightmare, nor was it even scary.  Just... stressful.  Given who was in the dream and what they did... of course it was stressful. But dang.  And then.... there was the waking portion of the day.  Cripes.  Seriously.  But then, I already unloaded about that on LiveJournal, so I'm not going to go over that one again here.

Speaking of LJ... man it's fun to change the templates there.  At a whim.  Just because I can.

*snort*

Sleeping in strange beds

It's going to happen tonight.  lol  Settle down!!  Nothing sordid.  Though I know you guys are probably SO disappointed to hear that (pervs that you are).  Naw, I have a sleep study tonight, a split study to be exact.  Health insurance companies try their best to cut costs these days, so I'm cramming two nights into one.  One half of the night simply monitoring, and the second half of the night with a CPAP machine (ugh) to see if it helps.  Hey, if it makes the little frog (my heart) NOT dance in my sleep and I can actually GET some decent sleep... then I'm in!

My heart's still calm since the 5 day dance-a-thon, thank goodness.  Though, it would have been perhaps helpful to have been monitored to see WTH it was doing, exactly, that whole time.  Oh well. I'm just glad it's not doing it now and that I don't have to go through chemical or electrical cardioversion.

Can't allow myself to fall asleep during the day today, so I got myself a horror movie to watch, and... I will watch a few episodes of AWKWARD.  OMG.. that series is ridiculously funny!  I mean, it's supposed to be a teen series, but DANG.  I'm more convinced it's for adults, because there is way too much adult stuff going on for it to be for teenagers.  Either that or prime time tv has become exceedingly liberated. lol  How so?  One phrase from one episode--- "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Whore."  Yeah.  So anyhoo.... (damn you, spellcheck!  Stop changing my "hoo's to how's!!!)... I must NOT fall asleep today, no matter how tired I am.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch....

I'll write more later, but for now..... I can't have any caffein or sugar after 11:00am!  Eghads!!!

There's a BlueBell banana popsicle with my name on it, and the clock's ticking!!! 

Laters!

That little froggy danced. For. Five. Straight. Days. Seriously?

I'm assuming it's part of the healing process.  But damn.  I'm used to my heart going out of rhythm for a few minutes to, say, upwards of an hour.  But....Five days?  Seriously?  Five days straight?  That's a bit of a stretch, even for me.

Not all arrhythmias are created equal.  All of them feel different.  For me, whichever this was coming back to rear its ugly head, felt like... well, I guess the best way to describe it would be to say it's like how a car engine idles when there's a bad spark plug, or when a distributer cap gets a little bad.  All that bumping and thumping and sputtering about.  It literally feels just like that, and in my case it went on like that for days without any relief.

Exhausting.

But last night as I got in bed and laid on my left side, the side that anyone who deals with arrhythmia issues dreads laying on, I started to cough.  It was a chest cough, the kind that feels like someone squeezing your heart while they're sitting on your chest.  I'm no stranger to this, mind you, as this is something that comes with heart issues.  But this was a little violent and went on for a few minutes.  But after.... after wasn't so bad, really.  Because after is when I felt the calm inside my chest that I hadn't felt in days.  WHAT a relief that was.

I could feel the familiar ache in my muscles that comes with conversion and wondered if that had actually happened.  But there was still a flutter or two, so I wasn't quite sure.  Yet.. I would take what peace I could get, because it's really hard to sleep when you're heart's doing summersaults in your chest all night.  The coughing finally subsided, and I slept.  When morning came... the all over ache was there, but... the sputtering engine that was my heart the previous 5 days... had calmed.  No more spluttering about in my chest, no more cold sweats and oddball headaches out of nowhere, no more waves of dizziness.  My body was tired and worn out, chest was aching badly.  But hey, my poor heart had a serious workout, so... I wasn't surprised by that so much.

Maybe I should have called my cardiologist.  Dr. Osorio did tell me that if my heart went out of rhythm for 6 hours or more to call... but, I was really sure it would work itself out.  It did.  And yeah, maybe 5 days later.  But I did learn something...

I will NOT be waiting like that again.

And, the next time it happens, IF it happens again, I will call Dr. A (my cardiologist).  Dr. O, btw, is my EP.  If he were closer, I would call his office, but... he's 1.5 hours away.  But my point is, I learned my lesson.  That 5 day stint took too much out of me.

And there was this one other teeny, weeny little thing this morning.  For about two minutes it felt like someone had taken a blazing hot sword and ran it up under my ribs and into my chest a few times.  The burning ache went up my chest, into my throat and into my face.  I've felt this in the past, but it's been a while.  Maybe a one last violent protest from my heart in reaction to what I allowed it to go through over the last few days.  Sorry, heart.  I won't do that to you again.  I have a really high pain threshold (toothache being the only exception).

So I guess I have to be nicer to myself and try not to be such a damn toughie.  I need to get rid of the idea that my mantra has to be "It will go away," because now that I have health insurance I don't have to suck up the pain and suffer through it all.  Old habits die hard, I guess.

I have to admit... those 5 days sucked, and the momentary occasional flutters I feel even now make me think... please don't start again!

Love me in perpetuity....

Okay... so I have to clear something up. ;p

For those who read my LiveJournal entries, you've noticed I've renamed my journal there.  And for a couple of you who haven't gotten my forewarning about the name change on FB yet (sorry about that) I thought I would clear this up here since you still like to come here and read....

There's been a couple of questions, to say the least, an abundance of curiosity really... about what the name change means.

Love me in perpetuity

it's all an ephemeral dream anyway

This..... came to mind in early 2013, and the origin doesn't matter right now (not to dredge up the past).  It actually came to mind another way after an unpleasant (to say the least) phone call, the last of a couple before what I called "the big silence."  The original phrase was actually... "Hate me in perpetuity---it's all an ephemeral dream anyway."  That's what came to mind first.  But a split second after... 'hate' became 'love' and... well, that phrase has stuck with me ever since.

So as for the 'what does it mean?' part...

I guess the real question one may possibly be asking is what it means to me.  Now that.. I can answer.

Love is a choice.  And I suppose the same goes for hate.  After all, there is a fine line between love and hate, and some would even argue that the line blurs so completely between the two that they almost mimic one another.  I'm not completely convinced of that, but I do firmly believe (as I said) that they are choices we make.

Still, those emotions (for humans) are transient unless a choice is made.  And lets face it, few humans are capable of making that choice and allow knee-jerk reactions, thought-driven emotion to make decisions for them, etc... to create an outcome.  Few are actually in control of things as they would like themselves and others to believe.  It's human nature and natural.  No need for anyone to be offended by my saying this, and... no one has to agree with me. :)  It's okay for us to disagree.  And my friends, thankfully, are open-minded and intelligent enough to have these kind of conversations with me where we can disagree calmly and go on about our business without ill will.

So anyway, love or hate.  Choice.  And how does this play into an online blog?  Well, it's a journal, someone's thoughts, shared moments, dreams, wishes, parts of their day, their life as a whole at times.... and in my case... sometimes I go deep, and sometimes I don't.  And when I do I don't leave that entry up too long.  So that's definitely a momentary thing and not at all lasting here in cyberspace.

Readers... they are often passers-by.  Not always.  But sometimes.  Transient.

And there have been times, and there may be more, when I simply clean house in my blogs.  Transient.

And why do people read?  I don't know.  Genuinely interested in what I have to say?  Boredom?  Nothing better to do?  A friend emotionally invested in my well-being or happiness?  A curiosity thing?  Who knows?

The blog title... just a play on words steeped in truth and history and sprinkled with.... well, that reveals itself in the entries themselves.

After it's all said and done it's just me being me.

So.... there it is.  If it still doesn't make sense, well.. I guess you would have had to have been there to understand fully.  Though... I'm not so sure you would even then.  Maybe.  Maybe not.

Doll / Art / Photography / Office / room almost done

Busy weekend of sorts....

The art room has been a work in progress since the start.  It has SO much potential with the big windows on one side, the French doors leading onto the porch on the other..... just so much potential. This workspace is going to be more than just workspace when I'm done, more than just a creative womb where ideas and visions are eventually born.  This space will also be a decompression chamber of sorts.  Not everyone will get that concept.

So Pier 1 had the ottoman in the store, and the sofa/loveseat (it's really kind of both) will be in the store sometime this week (had to order it).  It's soooo pretty, and the ottoman... huge, and in fact it doubles as a coffee table (when using a serving tray on top).  Very cool stuff...  As a girl, well, it suits me just fine.  And eventually I will find an area rug to go in there as well.  One thing at a time.  :)

Working on the dolls in there will be easy, and I'll have a nice, comfy loveseat to kick back on when I want to take a break and chill out a while.  It's going to be quite nice.

I have a couple of custom orders soon, too, which is going to be pretty fun......

Below is a photo from Pier 1... it includes both the loveseat/sofa and the ottoman.  I just love it. :)

I can hardly wait!!!  :D

Marley and Me

No, not the movie. lol  My car and me.  We have a few places to go and people to see coming up, and dang... I'm so doggone worn out from that ablation... still.  But... between my T, my kids/grandkids, and my Marley... it's all good.  I'll get through this.  It's not easy though, I'll tell you that.

T has made this as easy as any of it could be, and it's so funny and cute how he never refers to 'the Mini' as "The Mini," but... as "Marley." lol  Comes as natural to him as calling my dog by her name, or.. calling the ferrets by their names.  So funny.

Day by day, one by one, I deal with the after effects of the ablation, get hugs and love from T and my kids, etc.... and even a little love from Marley when I drive him around.  There's joy in so much, even when I don't feel good.

That's all.  Nuttin' fancy to say today.  Now it's time to eat some lunch......

*waves*

Yeah... hilarious, and what talent. One of my favorite videos EVER! rofl!!

Been SO busy!!

A lot has happened since I logged in here.  Well, not so much as 'happened,' but more.. just stuff happening.  You know, life and junk....

For starters, I am no longer under the thumb of the Suckie Mae corporation!  THAT is huge!  So there's one thing.  The other... well, I've put a couple of pics below, but I basically have a new MacBook Pro with Retina display.  Soooooo happy about that!  My little "Vintage" MacBook finally gave up the ghost after many years of service to myself, and whoever owned it before me (it was a referbished MacBook Pro)... but it croaked due to a bad NVIDIA graphics chip.  But still, that laptop never gave me a bit of trouble until the chip went bad, and even that took years.  It was old enough to be called "Vintage" by Apple, so it did its job well, while everyone I knew with PCs went through their OS nightmares, blue screens, hardware & software incompatibilities, hard drive crashes, failures, brain farts, etc....  Anyway, it was a good Mac (they always are).

My new toy!  The refurbished MacBook Pro was great, don't get me wrong, but this one.. is... WOW!   Thinner, brighter, faster, HUGE HD... so much fun.  Gorgeous.  And of course, as with all things Apple, the presentation is simply unmatched.  Love it!

I spent the morning (hmmmm... well, the better part of the day lol) getting it all set up with my stuff and taking care of online business.  But all and all.... so SO much fun!

Now on to the next task for the day....

Tomorrow, road trip.  Thursday, resting a bit.  Friday, another road trip.  And a relaxing weekend planned.  SO looking forward to that.

:)