White Dwarfs, Black Holes and medical systems

Okay, I have been a little “missing in action” but let’s just say I have found out that there are White Dwarfs, which are ex-stars so dense that their gravity would crush all known life; there are black holes, whose gravitational force is so strong that nothing, not even light can escape them; then there is the bureaucracy of a socialized medical system in which time, space, life, even meaning disappears under it’s dense mass.

I could spend my time telling you all the horrid things that have happened like how yesterday a specialist medical procedure totally unrelated to my heart that I have been waiting a year to get (the wait to see the specialist, the wait on the waiting list, etc) and now came almost to the top of the list to have the specialist take one look at me and go “What’s wrong with you.” Now, that is a question I have been getting all my life, but this time he came around his desk and took my pulse, telling me it was between 130-140 bpm just sitting there. I gave him the cocked brow of, “problem, what problem” hoping he would ignore the gasping and the odd facial pallor. So I explained a little and he told me that no anesthesiologist would touch me until this heart thing is solved so I am…..OFF the waiting list. (insert the wailing screams of the damned ala pictures of Dore’).

Good news is that I now have my chair, the Bethmobile, which is a loaner for this week, it is a lightweight folding chair and while I am not “in love”; It does pretty well. I thought it deserved a picture under “A Girl’s First Wheelchair” though I doubt my mother will try to press it into an album when I am not looking. There are lots of things that make a wheelchair cool but the one which interests me most is efficiency which means, how light, how adjusted to my body and am I above the wheel because when all my weight is above the wheel – the chair is very efficient and goes and goes. To give you an example, today when the women with oxygen was here, I needed to demonstrate when I go into oxygen deprivation so I walked around the apartment for about 5 minutes. My heart rate was 187, dropping to 175. With my wheelchair, I go around the apartment for five minutes to the same places and my heart rate is 110. That is good because the less my heart beats on “minimal” tasks, the more I can stay awake.

Now I also have what I refer to as my “Oxygen Bar” which is for when I have heart spikes (oh yeah, the holter test found out that besides the usual high heart rate due to walking my heart randomly spikes for periods of times up to really high rates which makes me temporarily tired and stupid). I go, “uh.....I was talking about...uh.....” And then I rest my head against the chair for about 2-3 minutes until the oxygen comes back to my brain. Problem sorted. I have oxygen by the computer and I have this portipack on the wheelchair for when I go outside. The oxygen rep was very UP on oxygen and suggested if I do hydrotherapy, “why not do it on oxygen, leave the canister on the side of the pool and do your therapy there?” ????? Right. Just so you know, it’s MY oxygen and no one is showing up with beer for an “Oxygen and Kegger nite!”

I will try to be back tonight or tomorrow for a “real” blog about world issues and stuff like that. I just wanted you to know what is up and that I am not giving up blogging, I am just fixing stuff so that I can get BACK to blogging, if you get what I mean. Also, since I am human deprived right now (and waiting in different doctor’s offices with other sick people really isn’t what I call socializing) PLEASE leave a comment. You don’t have to be supportive or know what to say because most of the time I don’t know what to say. I mean two nights ago I turned to Linda in the dark and said, “This is just a dream right? I mean stuff like this doesn’t really happen? I’m the hero, I’m suppose to be out there, only side characters are the ones with the weird illness kept up in the attic?” So you can stay stuff like “Stop talking about medical stuff so much, I am getting nightmares” or “Wheelchairs scare me” or “Gee Beth, you sure are chatty, have you been hitting on that oxygen already by any chance?”