Just Me

It has been 12 days since I came home from the hospital. The first week home was a hard transition. I was weak a lot of the times, slept a lot and hardly had any appetite. I was also dealing with a lot of pain – mostly chest pain. I took the prescribed pain medicine and while there was one particular day that the pain was so bad we almost had to call the hospital, it was managed okay. But I got through that first week and, fortunately, the chest pains are now no longer so prevalent. And when they do happen, they are not as intense, either. I had a long conversation with a nurse about how I was recovering and she gave us some good advice on what to do if the chest pain once again becomes difficult to manage. But the chest pains are not as bad now. Mostly, I have to deal with back pain. For some reason, I keep having pain in my lower back. I have continued to take the pain medicine but it’s a long time before it helps so I’ve used other things, like an ice pack, for that back pain. Fortu...

A week ago, I was doing something I normally do on a weeknight: Drinking a beer while watching Jeopardy! After the game show was over, I got up off the couch and started walking to the kitchen, planning to cook dinner. On the way, I started experiencing chest pains. I have not been sticking to my heart-healthy diet lately and, in fact, had been drinking heavily the last few days because I have been so depressed, so I have been experiencing chest pains every once in a while. Usually, I was able to manage the pain or it went away after a while. This kind of pain did not go away. In fact, it got worse, and seemed to grow stronger with each passing moment. I went into my room to lie down and soon my kids were in there with me. I told them about what was going on, clutching at my chest and wincing in pain. The pain was so agonizing. I was also feeling nauseated and, at one point, I vomited. My son used my phone to get a hold of my husband to let him know about this...

I read two books yesterday – and by “read” I mean that I picked through these two books only to get the kind of information that I needed from them. I did not read these books from beginning to end. I didn’t start at the beginning and read each and every page until the last one. No, I perused the table of contents in one or just paged through the other one to get to where I would find the information which I got these books for. I have zero interest in learning how to kayak or how to make maple syrup in the woods, so I didn’t read those parts of those books. I did, however, want to know a thing or two about first aid in the woods, hiking essentials, the types of oil lamps, how to clean and gut a fish, how to build a campfire and how to find your way in the woods if you get lost. Oh, and the recipe for the oatmeal cookies was a nice plus! But I didn’t want to read about how to ride in a canoe or climb a mountain, and I didn’t really wanna know how to build an outhouse in the woods ...