On my mind...

I just started a spreadsheet for the pacemaker implantation, because I have always had rather great health insurance.  Every surgery, every hospitalization has never been more than a co-pay or two.  In fact, I have never had a hospitalization with an overnight stay generate a bill.  That will not be the case with Medicare.  For example, I did not realize that there is a rather hefty co-pay for each day of the first six days of a hospital stay with Medicare.  As in it will be over $600 for the two days just for that co-pay.  Then there is the co-pay for every doctor for every visit, thankfully I will just have one doctor as long as there are no complications.  And the co-pay for anesthesia.  Reading my plan documents, I cannot figure out if I will be charged for all the medications, because I would rather bring my prescriptions from home if that is the case.  However, I know that is not allowed.  Add the spreadsheet to the plane ticket and I am immensely overwhelmed by the costs.

A weakness of mine, I have come to notice, is that when faced with overwhelming expense, I have this irrational and difficult-to-ignore desire to practice retail therapy.  By that I mean, at this very moment, I am thinking I should just click on the confirm button to finally buy myself a stand mixer.  Or perhaps headphones since I would need them to listen to music in the hospital.  Unfortunately, I am not so sensible to practice retail therapy by finally buying long-needed new glasses.  After all, is it really important that I see well for anything other than distance (driving)?  SIGH.

To distract myself, I just chowed down on a custard dish of those pickled carrots.  If you are wondering, Amos is perfectly willing to both eat them outright and to pre-clean the dish.  Such a diverse palate my little Fluffernutter has.

I was going to polish the silver today, in anticipation of the visitors in December, since I will not be able to do so after the implantation and prior to the 22nd, when my house will be most full.  However, I failed to accomplish anything other than freak out further over the pacemaker.  Silly Myrtle!

I have 10 days to: polish the silver, do the laundry, give Amos a bath (not until the night before), clean all the windows, wash all the lace curtains, vacuum the servant stairs, make the roasted rutabaga beer cheese soup, make roasted butternut squash and goat cheese shells and cheese, fetch groceries, fetch prescriptions, fill up on gas, water all the plants in the solarium and the hanging baskets in the dining room, remove the fountain pump, clean it, and store it in the basement, and prune back the rose bushes for the winter.

Because I have so little information, specifically, on what it will be like/feel like after the pacemaker implantation, I went hunting on YouTube.  That was a mistake.  A BIG mistake.  For me, at least.

I am worried.  I mean, Friday and Saturday, I had such terrible time with the palpitations, with the erratic heart beats, that I would have given anything to be in the hospital today getting the pacemaker.  I feel so ill and ... so very wrong.

I am worried, though, on many levels.

I worry about the pain.  I worry about this because I have such disproportionate responses to pain.  Take the last biopsy.  To be very, very, very blunt, opening a speculum felt as if the surgeon was tearing my flesh.  Not only did I scream, as I have done before, but the pain was so much worse that I literally tried to get away from her.  It was just awful. What will it be like in the hospital after the surgery?

I also worry about how I will respond to being touched so much and to be so very exposed.  Thin hospital gowns will not be sufficient to quell that trigger.  And my three greatest coping mechanisms will not be available:  Hold Amos; Organize Something; and Have a Fire.  Neither will I be able to: Burn A Candle or Cook Something.  How am I supposed to calm myself down if my arsenal is so very depleted?  Plus, I worry that, should I melt down, I will not have the space to work through that without some "medical" intervention, chiefly a drug to calm me down.  I react so very poorly to medications and am rather weary of dealing with side effects that I am not interested in having drugs shoved down my proverbial throat.  However, I doubt there will be a closet I can squeeze myself into if need be.  For that matter, it looks like I won't be doing much moving at all for a bit. 

Then, well, there is this fear that I will not be a cooperative patient for the cardiologist.  He is a male. I will be sedated and thus not all that cognizant of needing to be ... well ... of remembering that he is trying to help me when it comes time to touching me.  What if I fight him?  I haven't had to face male doctors or technicians in a vulnerable state for a very long time.  He has done so much to help me that I do not wish to do anything to make his job any harder.  I am privileged and very, very, very blessed to have him as my cardiologist.  SIGH.

So, if you haven't noticed yet, I am really, really, really worried about having wires screwed into my heart muscle and having a machine inside me. However, my heart is so wonky at this very moment and I am so short of breath that I wish it were the 25th.

Being so torn is very difficult. I have loathed, for a very long time, just how aware I am of my heart, to always feel it and to oft hear it. I can tell you my heart rate within a very close margin. But with all the erratic function that is happening with greater and greater frequency I am struggling to maintain the same blasé attitude I have as with, say, fainting or falling. This just feels so very wrong. And it terrifies me.

Then ... in the furthest corners of my heart ... there is this abject relief. Relief because folk with dysautonomia all too often hear such things as: "It's all in your mind." "If you wanted to be better you would." "This is all about getting attention." It breaks my heart to read of children battling dysautonomia greeted with such attitudes by family, friends, and medical personnel alike. But so does it hurt me when I hear such things.

"Surely," I think. "Surely a pacemaker will convince the naysayers."

And then I feel ashamed for thinking such a thing, for joining in with the doubters and all those who are so very unkind, not to mention unsupportive.

Sleep is hard to come by, between worry dreams and the wonkiness. I am worried and weary and already ... already missing Amos like crazy.

Silly Myrtle....