And then the Circus Started

It was one of those days. I was back in the doctor's office for a few tests. This doctor's office is attached to the hospital. It wasn't supposed to be any big production. The nurse did the usual: blood pressure, pulse, listened to my lungs -all that stuff.

Then she did an EKG test for my heart. That's when the circus started. The nurse ran out to get the doctor. Then the doctor ran out to get more help. She came right back to see if I'd lost consciousness. She asked me how I felt, “Did my heart feel like it was racing?”

I told her I felt fine, good enough to split firewood. That seemed to confuse her. She told the emergency room to expect me. They thought I was coming in by ambulance, not from down the hall. Everyone was racing around trying to find a wheelchair that could both carry me and fit down the narrow hallways. Finally, I made it clear I could just walk over. The nurse walked along with me, as if she could do something in case I collapsed.

When I got to the emergency room they took one look at the EKG printout and said, “artifact.” I wasn't sure what that meant. Then they hooked me up to their big machine and it produced a nice normal readout. As it turns out, “artifact” means that the doctor office machine was malfunctioning. The doctor thought I had a heartbeat of 206, instead of the 70 it actually was.

Of course, then the ER sent me for chest x-rays to confirm that my heart wasn't about to explode. That looked pretty good overall too. Crisis adverted.

On the plus side, I got the ER doctor to examine my leg infection issues. She had the nurse give me a treatment and put me on antibiotics again. Also, one of the problems with the legs not getting better is that fact that I've been retaining water. It turns out that my recent diet of bacon, spam, and potato chips contains way too much salt. Normally my diet isn't that back, but I'd fallen into some old bad habits.

So I'm on diuretics and antibiotics for a bit. Before coming home we went to the grocery store and stocked up on fresh fruits, veggies, and no salt everything else. It's easy to heat up processed foods, which I'd been doing too much of lately. Hey, I had other stuff to do. Now my stuff to do is to get healthy, so I'm cooking skinless chicken breasts with lots of spices instead of salt. It's still yummy, just a lot more time consuming to prepare.

It was not the day I'd planned, but such is life. The doctor's visit in the morning was supposed to be 15 to 30 minutes. I didn't get out of the hospital until 4 p. m.. Then my lovely wife and I had a tussle at the pharmacy. They didn't get the complete order and it took lots of back and forth to get both antibiotics.

It was a pretty exciting day. Hopefully the new leg treatments will bear fruit, as they still hurt like a son of a gun. I don't think the wound clinic guy was quite on top of it. Maybe the trip to the ER will turn out to be a blessing in disguise, if the new leg treatments work out, that is.

-Sixbears