And I Don't Have Bette Davis Eyes

 

Right around the time that Dave was making his decision to go back to work which meant going 1,500 miles away from hearth and home, I had to schedule a doctor’s appointment in order to get my HBP medication renewed for another year.  The appointment was the day after Dave left.  Not surprisingly my blood pressure was through the roof; 157/97.  The doctor took it again a little later in the appointment—after I’d told her what was going on in my life.  It was down, but only to 140/80.  She also heard a heart murmur she said she hadn’t heard the year before and sent me for an EKG.  The doctor upped my medication which is an anti-anxiety medication and that made life more tolerable in more than one way.  When she got the results from the EKG she said that the damage dated back more than ten years.  Funny, how come no one ever mentioned it before?

It was the end of the school year and I wanted to take my daughter Amy and go to our home by the sea because I knew that I could deal with Dave’s absence there better than in Gig Harbor so I put off all the maintenance type medical appointments until later.  The last week of summer break I spent my days at Group Health Tacoma having an ultrasound of my heart, getting a physical, getting the girls pressed and having my eyes tested.  I don’t like to take time off from work for medical appointments 1.) because no one takes as good care of my student as I do and b.) because I try to save my sick leave for when my 90 year old mother gets sick.

Half of the results of those appointments went well.  Unfortunately the ultrasound confirmed that I have heart damage caused by HBP and possibly dating back to the ‘90s when I took ephedra in order to lose weight.  I am at risk of heart failure. When Dave left I'd felt like my heart would break, now I realized I'm in danger of just that. I’m taking my meds and eating more healthfully and I’ve lost ten pounds in three months.  At this rate I should reach my goal weight before I die—I hope.

The other bad news was that I have had some bleeding in my right eye.  My sight cannot be corrected in that eye.  In fact the glasses that I have, which are about ten years old, would probably be just fine if there wasn’t a twisted blood vessel that had caused the pooling of blood.  So tomorrow is another eye appointment at a different Group Health ophthalmologist in Federal Way to determine if the situation can be treated.  I am not looking forward to this, no pun intended.

Bette Davis was right when she said that getting old is not for sissies.