Today...

I am seriously considering legally changing my name to Iamnauseated.  That way, I won't be seen as complaining when I speak those syllables all the time.

I woke up today and realized that the triggering is fading.  By that I mean, I am not re-living every time that I find my mind quietening.  Sometimes I am awash in the flashbacks, but most of today I was awash in the aftermath: the way I see myself.

I am dirty.
Fundamentally.
Irrevocably.

My big accomplishment today was that I caught up on my dishes.  I have just been so very tired.  At least I do not have anything until next Tuesday.  Then church on Wednesday.  And the pacemaker appointment on Thursday.  The latter is already troubling me.

I think I need my head examined just for making it.  But I have fainted thrice now without the pacemaker reacting.  The nightly testing has ceased.  And I also have no help with near-fainting.  The algorithm that helps with the fainting is called Closed Loop Stimulation (CLS).  The CLS learns from the data the pacemaker collects about your heart activity and adapts.  You can dial up or down the sensitivity of the CLS, which is something my cardiologist mentioned that he could do when I last saw him.  But he only wanted to make one change at a time, and I wanted my heart rate turned back down.

Going to the pacemaker clinic costs money.  So, well, I avoid it.  But mostly I avoid it because I have to be wired up and being wired up means being exposed.  I just don't do well with that.  I have tried to stay with the same pacemaker nurse tech and I have her next week.  But, all in all, because being wired up and the strain of what the interrogatory makes me feel in my heart, I avoid going to the clinic like the plague.

And yet I am going.

I feel strange without the stress of the nightly testing.  That panic when my heart starts speeding up because a machine wants to give it ago is something that I have come to take comfort in, knowing the pacemaker was doing its job.

Now, the odds that after not even three years mine is having a problem are so infinitesimally small they are not worth even pondering.  And yet I worry.  Who wants to have her pacemaker changed?  Worse, still, who'd want her leads replaced?  Actually, I am not even sure they are replaced.  They might just be left and new ones inserted.  Once my cardiologist talked about the "space junk" that gets left inside the body.  AWK!

So, the appointment is made and I am trying not to think about it ... about both being wired up and about my fears as to the change in my pacemaker's servicing of my body.  In all likelihood, the settings just need to be tweaked.

The oddest part of my day?  Amos' incessant desire to play fetch.  He's been enamored with that squeaky bone ever since I got it.  When the first one expired, I got another and then another.  Bone #3 has lasted longer.  Tonight, he wanted to play fetch and kept it up through three full quarters of the football game.  Normally, he's good for about 5-10 minutes tops.  In fact, he sat and whined his way through the third quarter because I kept trying to stop playing.  Finally, I was able to ignore his whines long enough so that he gave up.

Normally, he gives up so quickly because he's all worn out and needs a nap.  But, tonight, he was raring to go.  And go.  And go.  My funny Fluffernutter!