5/17/23

It’s Wednesday. A lot has happened since I wrote last. First, I’m feeling better, so this is good. I went to see the eye surgeon at 7:15 AM on Tuesday morning. He agreed that I can’t see a dang thing and I need to have laser surgery called YAG, and I cannot wait three months to do it. So, he scheduled it for next Thursday, the 25th. I’ll have it done sometime in the afternoon. He said it would probably take a few days for my vision to recover. We shall see. They dilated my eyes, so I couldn’t see squat the rest of the day. My next appointment was with the cardiologist for my echocardiogram. I thought everything was going smoothly, but in the middle of it, she stopped, and said I would have to have an IV. The radiation made things to dense for the ultrasound to get a good picture, so she put in an IV and put in some kind of gel with a bunch of teeny weenie bubbles in it. Apparently that worked, and we went on with the exam.  She called in a nurse at one point because my heart rate was sitting at 44, and she couldn’t get it above 48. I said that was common, and that it skipped a Lotta beats, and then, for no reason at all, it would jump up to 117. At one point she yelled my name, and startled me. It looked like I had flatlined on the monitor, but my heart was just taking its own sweet time to beat again. After that appointment, I went to the sleep study place to pick up a monito I was supposed to wear that night.

When I went to bed, I had an elastic strap around my waist, an elastic strap around my chest, a cannula in my nose that was taped to my cheeks, a finger monitor that was taped to my finger, and the top of my hand, and another strap around my chest With the monitor on it. All of these things had wires going to the monitor. The wires came up out of the top of the monitor and poked me in the chin. I was told I needed to sleep on my back. I never sleep on my back. It makes my back hurt too much. But, I laid there for several hours, trying to get to sleep while David was snoring. I finally gave up and reached over into my nightstand because I had earplugs in my top drawer. I can’t use my right hand to get them because I have the finger monitor on, and it’s connected by wire to the monitor on my chest. So I dig around with my left hand and almost fall out of bed. I can squish the ear plug with my left hand and get it in my left ear just fine. I cannot squish the other ear plug for my right ear with my right hand because of that stupid finger monitor. It just didn’t work, so, I’m squishing it with my left hand and trying to reach around to my right ear with my left hand to put an ear plug in. I must’ve looked like an idiot. I was awake a whole lot more than I slept last night, so I don’t know what good the sleep monitor did. I had to have it on for a minimum of 6 1/2 hours and I was watching the clock to see when I could take it all off. I drove back to town this morning to return it, so we’ll see what becomes of that. My pulmonologist ordered it, and the next time I see him, I’m going to ask him if he has done that.