Present and precise...

Today, I tried to concentrate on getting a few things tended, rather than my appointment on Wednesday with the surgeon:

• Finished the load of laundry that I started yesterday and folded it and put it away.  
• Ran and emptied the dishwasher.
• Took out the recycling and trash.
• Caught up on filing.
• Made the 2016 folders for banking, insurance, medical, and taxes.
• Updated my medical expenses spreadsheet.
• Remade the bed in the guest suite.
• Carried up the latest batch of packages for my mother to the guest suite closet.
• Called about the new defunct Medicare company's premium being listed on my 2016 disability statement.
• Digitally signed and paid the first month's premiums for my new auto and house insurance policies.
• Filed an appeal for the lab fee for the biopsy sample that was not covered at all.
• Cleaned out the ash, brought in wood (one piece at a time), and laid a fire for tomorrow after counseling.

That was enough to exhaust me.  But not really enough to distract me.

My cardiologist emailed and asked that I take an orthostatic blood pressure (lying, sitting, standing...spending time in each state before taking it) every day for a week, choosing different times each day to have a cross section of my days.  I think that he is still pondering the new dizziness that I have been experiencing since the pacemaker was implanted.

I am not certain it is the pacemaker.  It could be the new medication.  It could also very well be something new that is life with dysautonomia.  I mean, I have gotten used to the world-tilting dizziness that I have, the sudden desire to grab onto something and hang on ... doing the latter even whilst leading meetings at my old job.  This dizziness?  This dizziness is subtle waves that wash over me, even whilst sitting or lying down, that give me pause.  I try to remain perfectly still because if I move before the dizziness passes, it become much worse.

I was thinking, though, maybe it isn't dizziness.
Maybe it is lightheadedness.
Or maybe it is the fadedness I experience, where the world begins to recede.
I don't know.
I have been thinking I need to be more careful with words.

Words are what I have been concentrating on whilst struggling to remain present during Georgie's self-tests at night.  I still loathe them with my entire being.  They still strike fear in my heart.  I still long to rip out the pacemaker and crush it beneath my feet.  SIGH.

But I have been working to remain present and, whilst doing so, search for precise words to describe the physical sensations in my body.  I know, now, that Georgie's torture sessions are 60 seconds long. I know that the ventricle pacing is most prominent in the first 30 seconds, building until that 30-second mark.  I know that my panic sets in after about 15 seconds.  I know that the second half of the test is as much relief as it is agony for me.

As to what I am feeling?  I still struggle to describe it.  I did ponder, tonight, that during that 15-30 second period it is not so much that I feel as if I cannot breathe, cannot draw a breath, as that I am choking on something, as if something is filling my throat from deep inside.  I also feel pressure in my chest.  I feel movement in my heart.  And I feel the electrical prods of Georgie's pacing.  Those are the physical sensations.

As to the other, my anxiety level rises as the test goes on and on.  That is followed by shame, wishing I could be big and brave during those 60 seconds.  As to the rest ... I am not sure.

In trying to slog through the self-tests, in trying to find a way to get through them, it occurred to me that I have been able to remain present and to think about what words would best fit, but when it comes to emotions I still flee.   I have been rather numb for well over a week now, having reached a tipping point the night my counselor came to visit me, because of that pain I had had earlier in the day.  I have been there enough of late.

Maybe, too, because I have been picking up and examining a few of the shattered pieces of me.  Such is colossally difficult work.  Brutal at times.  Full of quagmires of shame and self-loathing.

Tomorrow is counseling.  I hope to not go in my pajamas.  Maybe.