Breaking Records

I broke my record!

(Drum­roll please…)

Pre­vi­ous record: 14

New record: 17.5

17.5 vials of blood, that is.

Smashed it!

And the .5?

Evi­dent­ly my left arm has decid­ed to close for busi­ness after years of blood draws and IVs, and has built a block­ade of scar tis­sue. After it took the phle­botomist 5 min­utes to fill half of a vial, we decid­ed it was time switch arms.

After all, at that rate it would have tak­en approx­i­mate­ly 85 min­utes to draw 17 vials of blood.

No, thank you.

On the con­trary, that would ALSO have been a new record…

To say I am back in my star­ring role in a med­ical detec­tive series may be an understatement.

In fact, the past few weeks make for a nice lit­tle count­ing book:

1 Elec­tromyo­g­ra­phy

2 Neu­ro­log­i­cal studies

3 Car­diac tests

4 Vis­its to my friend­ly neigh­bor­hood phlebotomist

5 IV’s

6 Doctor’s appointments

Oooo, or per­haps it would be bet­ter sung back­wards like the “12 Days of Christmas?!?!”

“Fii­i­i­i­i­i­i­i­ive intra­venous infuuuusssionnnnssss!”

Take that, gold­en rings.

Need­less to say, it’s nev­er dull around here. In addi­tion to smash­ing records left and right, I also got myself a brand spank­ing new diag­no­sis code!

[If only peo­ple threw par­ties for new diagnoses…fiesta all the time! Sweet pota­toes for all!] 

ANYWAY.

Recent­ly, I had a tilt table test. I’ve had one of these before, but this one was much more exten­sive and was mon­i­tored on mul­ti­ple levels.

If by mul­ti­ple lev­els, I mean I could have walked into a bee hive and been pro­tect­ed, as near­ly all the sur­face area on the top half of my body was cov­ered by sticky, beep­ing, puls­ing things.

After being strapped to a freez­ing cold hos­pi­tal bed with a foot­board, the bed is raised to near­ly perpendicular.

And then you just stay there.

Strapped to a board.

Unable to move a muscle.

Chat­ting with the car­di­ol­o­gist, who tells you to “get comfortable.”

I mean, you lose feel­ing in your arm as your blood pres­sure cuff squeezes every minute or so, and the pulse oxime­ter decides you are dead here and there because the bed is so darn cold, but oth­er than that you are total­ly com­fort­able lay­ing against the pil­low made of plas­tic bags…

 In any event, while this whole process is hap­pen­ing, the nurse and doc­tor are watch­ing a lit­tle screen behind me (so sneaky!) and mon­i­tor­ing my heart rate and blood pressure.

And in my case, lit­er­al­ly watch­ing the blood drain out of my upper body and into my legs, much like a sand timer in a board game.

Real­lo­cat­ing resources? Eh?

I also had an IV, where the nurse was sup­posed to give me some­thing to put my body in a dehy­drat­ed state halfway through the test.

Hon­or roll stu­dent that I am, they didn’t even need it!

In fact, my blood pres­sure took a trip to around ⁷⁰⁄₄₀ and instead of watch­ing my heart start to beat like crazy to fix the issue, my med­ical duo watched my heart rate take a mini vacay to a whopping….31 beats/minute.

On sec­ond thought, I’m a pret­ty big fan of those bed straps.

 So any­way, dysautonomia.

Specifics as in, my organs haven’t been get­ting enough blood. For years.

No big­gie.

So let’s review my stats:

Retired

Hates to be cold

Goes to bed early

Eats exclu­sive­ly mushy food

Attends adap­tive yoga

Owns sev­er­al pairs of com­pres­sion socks

Recent­ly found her phone in her shoe rack…

Just in case those sta­tis­tics didn’t already con­firm “85 year old woman,” my car­di­ol­o­gist thought he’d go ahead and give me his instructions.

A pace­mak­er.

On sec­ond thought, 31 is the new 90?

Evi­dent­ly my feed­ing tube is lonely.

As hes­i­tant as I was to con­tin­ue dec­o­rat­ing my mid­sec­tion, after fur­ther research and dis­cus­sion it does seem like the lit­tle giz­mo would make a tremen­dous dif­fer­ence. Unlike a tra­di­tion­al pace­mak­er that reminds your heart to beat, this pace­mak­er would give my heart instruc­tions when there is a change in blood pres­sure, there­fore sup­ply­ing my organs with ade­quate blood — a nov­el concept!

Before I fur­ther my goal towards robot sta­tus, my med­ical fan club needs to do a few more tests to fine tune the details. How there are tests I have yet to check off the buck­et list is beyond me, but regard­less, this Wednes­day I’ll have a wire snaked up my leg and into my heart for an Elec­tro­phys­i­ol­o­gy Study, fol­lowed by assort­ed oth­ers in the next few weeks. 

What? That’s not how YOU cel­e­brate hump day? 

 Weird.

More impor­tant­ly, do you think Easy Spir­its come in sil­ver sequin?