HERE I GO AGAIN???

 

Well, I guess the first question that comes to mind is, “Have you missed me???” And, please, I hope y’all know I’ve missed you!!! As you all know, I came home from the hospital on Christmas Eve with a slew of MD appointments for follow up. For almost a week, I felt pretty good and tried very hard to not overdo.

On New Year’s Day, I had chills in the afternoon and when I took my temperature, it was 100.7. My chest also began to feel a bit tight and come Sunday, I did an online chat with a doctor. Arrangements were made for me to have another chest x-ray before seeing a doctor Monday morning.

I’d just had a chest x-ray on 12/31 and everything looked fine. The x-ray technician told me Monday morning that one’s heart and lungs can change in the blink of an eye. The Monday x-ray showed I had developed some fluid in my left lung, but not to the extent it had been in the hospital. So, the MD changed my prescription for Ibuprofen to Indomethacin. By the end of last week, the majority of the symptoms had disappeared, and as of today, Friday, 1/15, I am trying to be optimistic and work toward getting back to where I was at the beginning of December.

I’ve talked to or met with via video conference my regular MD and the pulmonologist. I had to have lab work done again Thursday, but am hoping all the numbers have returned to normal so I can stop getting poked every week. My last appointment is a phone call with the cardiologist at the end of the month. At that point, maybe he’ll take me off some of the meds they prescribed and order another CAT scan for some time in March or April to make sure everything in my chest has returned to normal. I’ll be quite happy to go back to utilizing Kaiser a couple times a year, if that, rather than an almost weekly or even daily check-back.

None of the doctors have been able to identify how my problem came to be. Apparently, I developed inflammation in my chest (Did you know they can do a blood test to identify the amount of inflammation???...I didn’t until this happened.) which led to an increase of fluid in the pericardium and my left lung. It’s amazing how much it hurt to breath deeply because of the amount of fluid in both locations. It was also amazing how swiftly my breathing began to return to normal once the fluid had been drained, especially from the pericardium. It’s also amazing how weak I became during this whole episode because I was unable to walk or exercise for more than a month. I wonder how bad it would have been if I hadn’t been as healthy as I was when it all began?

Now, I’m working to regain my strength and stamina. So far this week, I‘ve managed to do my exercises each day. I’ve also walked all around my cul-de-sacs each day a minimum of twice when the rain let up and three times yesterday and today and haven’t felt too terribly exhausted or out of breath. As my son says, “baby steps, ma, baby steps.” Right now, my Fitbit says I’ve walked almost 4,000 steps today. That’s a bit more than half of what I used to step during the hour I walked with my neighbor in the morning. I’m hoping I can return to that hour’s walk beginning Monday.

I lost my appetite during this whole thing, but it finally seems to be returning. I was eating, but nothing tasted all that good, and when I tried to think of something I could order in or make myself, nothing sounded good enough to expend the effort to either get it or make it. So far this week, I’ve made myself something for dinner each night that sounded and tasted great. I even had take-out on Wednesday with a great friend, and we practiced safe contact with masks and distancing from each other at the dining room table…about six feet apart. I’m also hoping to have take-out again today with another friend with whom I’ll also practice social distancing.

I haven’t yet had the energy or imagination to return to posting something on my blog since the end of December. I’m hoping that with this post, I can begin to return to writing. Poor Hannah and Luke have been hanging out there wondering what’s in store for each other for far too long. I’m going to have to go back and read what developed before I can move them forward. I’ve also been playing around with another book idea about someone named Charlie Something…not much imagined so far beyond her name and where I think I want her to go.

I’ve missed writing and posting and hearing back whatever anyone wants to respond. One individual pointed out I only had about four (4) people who were reading my posts, but I think there are more of you who do read, but don’t post a “like” or a comment. And that’s just fine because in most cases, I’m writing for my own enjoyment rather than to receive approbation from the readers. I also found it amazing how lack of energy steals any creative ideas right out of my head. I would have thought that all that laying around and doing nothing would lead to a lot of creativity, but, nope, it didn’t one single little bit. I found that rather disappointing and look at all those days as wasted days and opportunities, although my body was in the process of healing itself and that’s most likely where all the energy, creative or otherwise, went.

For now, I’m not promising to have a blog post each and every day. I don’t have a 2021 goal of posting something every day. I’ll post whatever I manage to create at any given point whether it does happen every day or once a week. Meanwhile, I’m wishing y’all an extremely happy and HEALTHY 2021. I’m also hoping we all can get vaccinated in the very near future.