Ugh! Fine, I’ll write something! Geez.
So the post-hurricane monsoon eventually hit Illinois and dumped copious amounts of fluid upon our hapless suburbs, and a friend of ours has an aunt and uncle living in dangerous proximity to a lake. Most of Saturday afternoon on the 12th was spent moving their furniture to the second floor and sandbagging his house, and we didn’t get home again until around 1am. Nothing really notable happened, but I was highly amused by the garter snake seeking high ground on a recently arranged sandbag; thankfully I didn’t step on any wildlife while wading through the knee-deep miasma back to Jen’s car.
Yeah, really I’m fine. Cardiologist gave me a quick look-over and pronounced the episode I had a couple weeks ago a fluke, but that I should keep an eye on it and report back to her if it happens again. In other news, she says my performance in the stress echo is “fantastic,” so there’s that.
I’m giving away three boxes of my books, but the people at work get first dibs.
Reports of my demise are highly exaggerated.
For those who haven’t heard, I paid a prolonged and unexpected visit to an emergency room on Wednesday. There I was, sitting at my desk doing some last-minute queries sipping a decaf iced coffee I’d acquired from Dunkin’ Donuts, when I’d started feeling somewhat odd. Not to be a worry-wart, I shrugged it off and continued banally pounding-out horrifying SQL resplendent with awe-inspiring and highly convoluted JOIN statements when my heart began pounding like I’d just finished a brisk 20-minutes playing DDR.
It’s too bad I don’t have a previous stress echo to compare this to, since I’ve never had one before.
Anyway, my appointment was scheduled for Wednesday 9am at Northwestern in Chicago. I got back to work around 1:30pm, and I was right, they spent a billionty years digging into my ribs and various other spots. They say my anatomy doesn’t seem to match my diagnosis, which is somewhat amusing. He knows how CC-TGA, JAA, and dextrocardia can go together, but it seems counter-intuitive.
Appointment at the cardiologist was pretty uneventful. Dr. Mendelson seemed surprised I’m doing so well with such a diverse and staggering quantity of heart defects. She asked me a couple times who referred me, and why I was there, but my answer never wavered: I want a Cardiologist familiar with, and who has seen many other adult congenital heart patients. And here’s the funny part: she more than proved my point.
