Apparently I Am Too Important to Be Reached in Everyday Ramblings

We decided to take an easy walk this morning. Mrs. Sherlock had a birthday party to go to and is getting ready for her Grand Canyon rafting extravaganza. I had done my leg presses and treadmill “run” earlier and because of the weather and spring barreling through so fast we decided it was gardens we wanted to see instead.

The peonies in this garden were spectacular and I did take pictures but the glare with the pinks and reds cannot be addressed without some sort of filter and I was using my iPhone. This was an early south-facing rose. This is the yard of a master gardener and the rest of his roses face west so are not fully in bloom yet. There were a bunch of yellow roses, like tea roses in bloom a few blocks away and their subtle scent was lovely. We were a couple of old ladies on the prowl. :)

I admit I am feeling old. I had a medical scare this week, which brought that into focus. It was a bad morning at work. Mr. On the Spectrum wanted me to remove the phone number from both the invoices we send out and the notifications that go with those invoices.

That phone number happens to be mine.

There I was trying to get up the courage to write out the formal complaint and the guys, because Motorcycle Man was involved in this, pissy about the way I had handled a concerned customer decide well the best way to deal with this is to basically make it impossible for our customers to get ahold of us.

You know, this isn’t a criticism it is a fact, that if one is on the spectrum, customer service is absolutely meaningless to you. It has no relevance to your numbers or metrics and takes precious time. The Mark Zuckerberg School of Management.

I was home, I was annoyed and feeling stressed and I needed to go to the grocery. As I grabbed my bag with bags in it and headed out the door and up the back stairs I started to feel unmistakable chest pain and pressure. Later I started getting numbness in my left hand, arm, shoulder and finally my cheek. That freaked me out.

If I was having a heart attack I reasoned I could get help, I live really close to the hospital and there are always ambulances around. It was more a stroke I was worried about.

When I got home I ate a chewable child’s aspirin, drank a glass of water, and lay down on the floor, did some deep breathing and all the left sided stuff resolved. My chest was sore, and remained sore for the rest of the day. I went to see the employment counselor after work.

It was a little unnerving going to sleep later but I was really tired. The prospect of not waking up crossed my mind.

Yesterday of course I called the triage nurse and of course they wanted to see me. My EKG was perfect, my heart rate and blood pressure normal. The on call doctor spent a fair amount of time with me and I ended up with five (five!) prescriptions, a bunch of cautions and a cardiology consult. Eek.

There may be an angioplasty and stent in my future.

It turns out the drug I have been taking for my migraines for gosh over 20 years is contraindicated for people with heart disease. And I have had a cluster of migraines lately and had taken the drug earlier in the day. I ever so much hope it was the culprit but the work stress was not helping at all and was a component in the migraine cluster.

I now have nitroglycerin to carry with me everywhere and some alternatives things to try for the migraines and an idea of what to do if and when this happens again but I sure would like it not to happen again.

Depending on what unfolds I think I may take some medical leave. No job, and particularly this one, is worth risking my health for.

Seriously though, I blame the President for part of this. All the cruel harmful things he has been doing… if I have to blame someone… he is a good choice.

I find it interesting that in the middle of all this unfolding is when I saw the syringes on the ground and reported them. This is the woman I want to be…one that is concerned for us all, not just myself… that is how I want to go out.

Last updated May 19, 2019