An interesting week and a half!

First, I would like to share the thanksgiving photos. Above is just a sneak peak. The rest of the few that were taken are on Flickr (click where it says thanksgiving photos to go there). If anyone sends me more pictures I can add them to the Flickr page or post them here. I had a great time! To have both my sibs and all three of the nieces in the house was great. I kept thinking that this may be the last time that all three girls and their mother are at my house for thanksgiving together. They are old enough that they have their own lives and they live pretty far away. Then again, you never know. It could become the next family tradition. It was fun to watch the interactions between the family guests and see that people were enjoying being together. I like cooking thanksgiving dinner. And once the construction madness is over any overnight guests won't have to sleep on the couch!

So that was the interesting and fun stuff.
The other interesting part of my week was not so fun. It was something that I wouldn' t blog about if it had actually been serious. It turned out to be not serious at all so I will blog and trust that no readers will overreact!

On Monday I felt strange and I chalked it up to a busy weekend and not wanting to go back to work. On Tuesday I felt worse--tight and congested in my body. I went over to a friend in the PE dept. and had my blood pressure taken. It was high. They attributed it to stress of work. I did the same the next day hoping it would be better, but it wasn't. So I scheduled a dr. appt. for the next day. When I went, my bp was still high. He scheduled some tests and a follow-up appt. I went home feeling better. He hadn't seen anything that needed immediate attention, I wasn't in danger. Then I went home and I started to feel worse. My back ached, my torso felt really full, I ate dinner and it felt stuck in my neck, my neck felt full and stiff. These are all symptoms for women of heart problems. So at about 6:30 I had Robert take me to emergency. To shorten this long story...I got some nitroglycerin and a baby aspirin and spent the night at the hospital hooked up to monitors, had about 6 EKGs over the course of my stay, had a chest xray, had three blood tests, and had a stress echocardiogram the next morning (where you get on a treadmill all hooked up and they also take pictures of your heart for 20 minutes before and after) and all of it showed no sign of any problems.

The doctor said I was right to come in, though. My kind of symptom are commonly not taken seriously by women (and others) since everyone thinks of chest pain and left arm pain for heart. That is the way a heart attack is for men, but apparently women often don't have anything they describe as pain. So my symptoms were true symptoms of a heart attack in women. But the doctor also said that with all my test results, it was definitely not happening due to my heart. Hurray!!! I told the radiologist that it was pretty sad that it took a trip to the hospital to get me on the treadmill! I'm interpreting the whole episode as a wake-up call. I will be following up, but all indicators point to an accumulation of stress that I wasn't managing.

So, Happy Holiday Season everyone. May all of your EKGs be normal and all of your tests negative! I'm off to have some fun!