Wednesday, October 29, 2008

ECG...is this thing on?


I spent 30 minutes scrubbing sticky residue off my chest this morning in a state of frustration and exhaustion. I acquired my portable ECG monitor yesterday for a 24 hour trial after bringing concerns to my doctor about my heart randomly starting to pound over the past 6 weeks. It’s becoming more frequent and intense, but apparently the cure is to wear a heart monitor… because nothing happened the whole time I wore it! It’s just particularly awful because I have bruising and rash between my chest and round my ribs where the jumper cable sticker thingy’s were and a headache from another sleepless (yet calm and rhythmic) night. Eerrr!

Last week I was talking to the therapist I started seeing months ago when the whole cancer thing started and during a conversation about sleep it dawned on me that I have not slept, like truly and deeply slept in almost a year now. By the time I was diagnosed I could barely lie down without suffocating from the mass and fluid that was rising in my lungs (and later heart) not to mention a choking cough, night sweats and itching… I was a zombie for about 4 months before prior to my x-ray. Then broken painful fragments of sleep during my stay in the hospital after surgery, and straight into chemo with all its side effects shortly after. I can honestly say I sleep in fragments never really hitting REM for very long, no wonder my short term memory is getting worse by the… what was I saying?

On a bright note it snowed for the first time yesterday, big time! I should be grumpy about it (like everyone else) but the whole house was piercingly bright this morning with the sun reflected off the snow which is so much better than the last 2 weeks of rain. Plus for me the faster we move from one season to the next, the faster I get through this. Ill be grumpy when I go shovel off my car later, jeeze where’s my portable ECG now!