Another Year....that is. It's gone. It packed up and is on its way out. The taxi is waiting. The plane ticket is in its greedy little hand. What a year.
It has been EPIC. Crazy. Insane, fucked up and immeasurable. I have no idea how I survived. Seriously. I spent almost a week in the hospital. I am lucky to be alive. Life is a crazy twisted mess of more fucking crazy.
I thought I was going to die.
The pressure in my veins. The fear in my heart. The pain. The dizziness. I thought I was going to die.
I didn't. FYI, no shit. I wouldn't be typing this otherwise. I'm alive. I never thought I'd have this little lesson so early in my life. I am thirty two years old. I am not old enough to die, though people have gone before me, younger, brighter, more full of the stuff that makes us burn out fast and in a blaze of glory.
I am alive.
I haven't written a word in months. I've been focusing on my health. Eating better, working out at least four days a week. Changing my life. De-stressing. Living in the moment. Thanking God and the powers that be that I'm still here in this moment. I've had some scary scrapes. Preeclampsia with my first son. Blood Pressure so high it's amazing I didn't have a stroke. I didn't think it would affect me long-term.
I didn't think.
I hate going to the doctor. Not only does it take time, and I hold time like a bandit with just hours to live...it takes money. Something of which I am even more obsessed and careful with. You have to be when you are living on scraps from writing and your wonderful husbands income. I have long thought of returning to the world of Health Insurance, but just the thought breaks me out in hives. I will make something of my writing or go back to school, I will not sludge through the horrible Insurance world ever again. Never.
So I don't go to the Doctor on what you might call a regular basis. Every two years maybe. Less often probably. If I'm dying well then don't call the ambulance drive like the devil because if I live through this shit, I will not pay thousands for a car ride. I am stubborn to say the least. A towering wall of immovability if you ask my husband. I don't budge.
I had a toothache. A bad, horrible, killing my face toothache. It had moved up my face and into my ear. I went to the Dentist, kicking and screaming, paid my copay begrudgingly. Waited...waited...and waited in the waiting room where every second made me twitchier and more annoyed. Fifty bucks to sit FOREVER...I hated every moment. By the time they called me back I was practically vibrating with anger. I didn't want to be there. I wanted to go home to die in agony in a place I loved.
She took my blood pressure.
Silence.
You could have a heart attack!
What?
You could also have a stroke.
What the fuck?
I in an already frightened pain ridden state panicked. I might have jumped from the seat and needed to be peeled from the ceiling.
It didn't make sense. My blood pressure was insanely high. Stroke possible high. So high that when in labor and pre-eclampsic I had an EMERGENCY C-section.
Of course this high-blood pressure business meant my root-canal would be postponed, because the Dentist was uncomfortable working on someone with so high of blood pressure.
I left in a cloud of denial...and pain...and extreme fear buried somewhere deep.
I didn't tell my husband everything of course because it frightened me. The next day...I dragged myself to the Doctor, who suggested I go to the emergency room.
Now I will say that when going to the ER, it is convenient, (terrifying), to have extremely high blood pressure. All these fancy machines start flashing and making noise and you are whisked away to a private room and covered with goopy sticky monitors that make sure you aren't having a heart attack. They draw your blood and bam you've been in the waiting room long enough to sit in a chair. It's fantastic, (albeit terrifying), service.
Later they ask a thousand questions, and poke you everywhere. Have you take chest x-rays and start taking Nitro Glycerin. Until a doctor comes by to explain that you are not in fact having a heart attack or stroke but you have scary blood pressure and you should see your doctor tomorrow.
Upon seeing said doctor, blood pressure is still scary high, and you go into the ER again later that night to do it all over again except this time you had a bad reaction to the diuretics and anti anxiety meds which surprisingly make you more fucking anxious so you spend five fucking days getting poked, prodded, stress tested, Cat Scanned, Angiogramed, and every other horrible damn test you can think of and go home so damn happy to be alive that working, writing, is the last freaking thing on your mind.
So yeah....that happened. And I'm taking a sabbatical so to speak to concentrate on said health and blood pressure until I'm sure I'm going to be ok.
I feel better just typing that all out. I still can't believe it.
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