Good News

I might not have to pay for an orchiectomy!!! If it stays cold like this I’ll just freeze my cojones off!

Can you believe this! Damn! It’s cold! Have thermostats set to 70 and can’t actually get the heat in the room past 67. At night when I’m trying to sleep if I roll over from one spot in the bed to another; it’s like going from the toaster to the freezer! Like a pop tart in reverse! [note to self: No, I don' wanna move back to Minnesota.]

It is so dry here, the buzzards are booking flights to Death Valley. If I walk out of my apartment without a half-pound of product on my hair [like I've done the last two days] I get hit with this instant frizz bomb.

Well, Tuesday was … interesting. I had an appointment with the people who are monitoring how fast my blood clots. The nurse who was working with me took my vitals and got real concerned. My pulse was running 130 beats a minute, what they call tachycardia. He took it again and it was 140. He really wasn't that good looking. So he wheeled me over to the walk-in clinic to so they could run an EKG and have a doc check me over. This is getting' to be fun…not! A new RN ran the EKG on me took the strip and as she was leaving the room to find the doc she mumbled, "This is interesting…" Now, you ned to understand that I was not feeling any symptoms of anything 'cept this damn toothache. And the possibility of going back to the hospital kinda jumped to the front of my head. I wasna happy about this but wasna anxious either. The doc comes in and he says, "Well, the good news is you're already on coumadin." He goes on to explain that I have something called Atrial Fibrillation, what the medical community calls AFib. He explains to me how AFib can cause to strokes. When the atrium is shaking like jello (fibrillating), the blood just sits there and doesn't get pushed on to its next destination. Blood that just sits around makes clots. When the heart finally gets its act together again and pumps blood properly, out go these lovely little clots. To the brain or to the heart muscle. Apparently, the first line of defense agains the AFib generated clots is to make the blood clot much more slowly. In comes Coumadin, which I'm already on because of the clots in my legs and the clots in my lungs. I get to follow up with a cardiologist next week who will run more tests and probably hone my medications a bit. The doc on Tuesday gave me a blood pressure medicine and I'm not sure why. My blood pressure could run low because of the bp meeds I'm already on and the doc was aware of those meds when he prescribed this other med. Yesterday, with the new med, I felt a lot of weakness in my arms and legs. I don't know if that's the AFib or the new med.

One of the upshots of being on coumadin is that major elective surgery is probably out. What does _that_ mean? Well, I can probably get my augmentation done and, again, probably get my orchie done, but SRS is probably out. I will have to investigate this to be sure, but there are a lot of blood vessels in that area of the body and how I bleed and clot will probably be a concern to any reliable surgeon doing the operation.

Oh! The doc on Tuesday also gave me a prescription for amoxicillan for my jaw infection, too. This is a Good Thing.