Coping With Fatigue

I’m sorry for missing a couple of days, loyal reader, but getting through each day with this constant fatigue and weakness has rather thrown me off kilter.

wednesday

Sheba and I walked together with Di and her mutt, Charley, and then we came home, picked up some stuff, and left for the ferry. I was headed in for an x-ray, but after missing the 11:30 ferry, I was not inclined to wait in line through the ferry lunch hour, and so we came back home. We’ll try for the x-ray this morning, and we’ll leave much earlier in the day. It’s high Summer and so the ferry lineups are deadly.

Steve is making plans to come to Gabe on the bus from Victoria. I feel I can’t go down there alone on Sunday, sleep in the car overnight, and bring him home on Monday. That was our plan before hearing from Dr. Shoja and Jennifer that they are concerned about my heart.

When I got home from the lineup it was lunch time, so I fed the brood, and then I had a nap. I just was not ready to do anything. As soon as my head hit the pillow, boom, I was sound asleep. And then came hours of watering before a relaxing night.

I watched Staged last night. It’s on Amazon Prime, and it is deliciously clever and funny. I am a monster David Tarrant fan, and I also adore and respect Michael Sheen. Together they make a miraculous success of an idea proposed by director and writer Simon Evans who is also a character in the ‘play.’ I highly, highly recommend this show for a good time.

thursday

Thursday, we rushed to get out of the house early. With all the tourists on the island, ferry lineups are long, so we caught the 7:35 am ferry. I had to wait 40 minutes for the x-ray, and then we went to the grocery store and then to the ferry to come home. We got on directly and were home here by 10:30.

We stopped for a short walk in our favourite park, and I found myself going up a show rise on the grass, and I was shattered by the effort. I was kind of glad of the reminder that something is dreadfully wrong. It is not in my head. And when we got home, I got busy with watering. 

Jennifer called me not long after I got home. She arranged for me to get the blood tests this morning at 8:00. And now that those tests are done, all that’s left for me to do is wait to hear from the specialist in Nanaimo.

After her call, and with all the watering done, I had a very early dinner and went to bed at 7:00. I was just flattened with fatigue; I slept 11.5 hours last night, and that is incredibly unusual for me!  For four decades, I lived on 4 hours of sleep a night, so last night was the equivalent of 3 nights sleep! 

Today, of course, will be a slow day. I’ll water the garden where necessary, and chill through the remainder of the day. Slow and easy is the rule until my heart issue is fixed.

friday

Sorry about missing a few days there. Here’s the thing: I do only the essential things each day requires. I feed the brood, check my emails, walk Her Highness in the coolness of morning. Then I do one thing—shopping or, lately, travel for a test. Then I have lunch and a nap. Then. Do the watering. Mid-afternoon, I chill or nap, and then I go back to finish watering. Then I am done. I make dinner and spend the evening on the chaise.

That’s what Jennifer wants me to do and that’s what my body wants me to do. I won’t do yard work or. Gardening until I find out what is going on. My sense from past experience, Dr. Shoja and Jennifer, we all think it’s my heart. But this is different from all five past cardiac issues. The others were more severe and they onset suddenly. Whatever is wrong now allows me now allows me to function well at a basic level.

I had an angiogram when I was in my forties, after my second heart attack. They looked at my heart and a mass of veins and arteries all around it, and they were shocked. They expected to find clogging, but they said I had the finest arterial system he’d ever seen because most of his patients have clogged arteries. Plus, I was much younger than most of his patients.

But maybe things have changed. It’s rather agonizing not knowing. It’s the weekend now, so I won’t hear from an internist until next week, or longer. I have no idea what’s going to happen, but one thing I do know is this: Jennifer is treating me as an urgent case, and I feel very safe in her care.

Yes, I worry about what’s wrong, but I worry more about what comes after the diagnosis. The best possible outcomes is this: I live like this because they can’t find what’s wrong, or because they can’t fix what’s wrong. The worst is surgery. My condition makes the thought of getting on a plane grotesquely horrifying. I’m not afraid of flying, I love flying, but I’m very, very afraid of flying with my condition in charge of my nervous system. Well, the thought of surgery makes taking a flight seem like a walk in the park.

But I mustn’t think about the future, I must only think about today. But ….

Steve arrives on Monday. He’s going to want to do things. He knows what’s going on. I invited him to go home should he wish to, but he wants to come. One day, the phone will ring, and it will be an internist from Nanaimo, and the story will get a new chapter. One day at a time, with rest when required. Forward.

I keep worrying about this heart of mine, dying, what’ll happen here when I am in the hospital if I have surgery, who will look after Sheba. I’ve only just begun this latest medical journey.