Saturday, February 21, 2009

And the results are....

I had my stress test and echocardiogram on Thursday. The results were good. There was no damage to my heart. The MD said that things looked pretty good. He was very concerned about the level of stress and the jump in my blood pressure and recommended that I go get my self a new pair of walking shoes and do some power walking. I am not going to have to take any medication for the blood pressure at this time. He wants me to watch that and if it continues to go up, then we can look at what is needed.

I was so relieved. Thank you for your well wishes and good thoughts. They really helped.

Off to my knitting class. Going to knit a sweater in a weekend.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Got Heart?

Life can really throw you a curve when you least expect it and cause you to lose heart. This is what happened to me.

Work has been really stressful lately and I am not handling it well. Recently, I have been experiencing chest pains. I wasn't worried because 14 years ago, I was diagnosed with a problem that affects, what the MD said was the electrical wiring in my heart. It is like the wiring is crossed or short circuited. This creates an additional beat in my heart. When stressed or I have had to much caffeine, I also get a wobble. I have been able to control this for the most part over the years by limiting my caffeine and practicing relaxation techniques when I felt stressed.

The stress at work is so bad right now that I am not doing a good job with either of these things. The end result, the wobble is back, Blood pressure is elevated and I have been having chest pains that I am not able to stop, because I can't relax enough.

Last Friday, I came home with chest pains and tried to relax, hoping they would stop. They didn't, they kept getting worse. I was also experiencing dizziness. OK - no laughing here, it was more dizziness than my normal dizzy self. Asked Mike to take me to the ER to get checked out.

The good news in all of this is that I was not having heart attacks and there is no damage to my heart at this point. The bad news is that there is a problem in the left ventricle of my heart that is causing the chest pain and my heart to continue to wobble around quite severely in my chest.

I will be having a stress test and an electrocardiogram on Thursday, Feb 19 to figure out what is happening and what I am going to need to do to take care of this. I know that this is probably the end to my coffee habit. I am so going to miss that morning cup.

This whole experience has made me tired. But at least I know why my creative juices have dried up. Hard to be creative when you are just plain tired. Typically I don't share this kind of information about myself, especially on the Internet where anyone can read it. I do have a reason for deciding to do this now.

Life is to short to let people that you have no emotional attachment with get to you to the point that you suffer extreme stress. Work is necessary, but it is just a paycheck. There are more important things in your life and that is what you should focus on. Family is important, friends are important, being able to have a life outside of work that you enjoy is important. I let my work become the most important thing in my life to the extent that it has now caused me a health problem that will not go away easily.

My point here is to remind everyone that in these stressful and uncertain times, don't forget what is truly important in your life. Keep those things close to you. I don't know when I lost track of this, but I am back on track. I got heart.