What does that mean?
It means it's January seventh!
Not that in itself is all that, but I thought I'd tell all my non-readers that I'm still here. I'm doing ok and I plan to start my cardiac rehab this week sometime.
I'm going to be going to a knap-in this March. It'll be my first and I hope to camp it to get some dirt-time. I need to go outside and play a lot more often but living in a city or city suburb makes things difficult. Exercise is something you take time out of your day to do, rather than just being a part of life itself. Dirt time!
I so wanna go camping. It's been so long.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Oct. 9, 2010
That's not today's date, of course. Today is the 13th, four days later. I survived the 9th.
I woke up on Saturday with my right arm feeling a little "light," for lack of a better word. It was a little earlier than usual for a Saturday morning. I walked out and turned on my computer, then realized there was nothing I particularly wanted to do with it, so I shut it off. During this period, Jessica also woke up. We decided to go to Einstein for our weekly coffee and bagel fix.
I felt worse on the way over, like I used to feel when I was 20 and drinking wine coolers, which were what I could most often get at the time. My armpits felt just like that - icy and hot at the same time, my heart was a little arrhythmic, etc. Just like back then. As it always has done in the pat, it "popped," and went away. I felt great.
We get to Einstein and I didn't feel so good again. This time it was just a little worse. Again, nothing to worry about, we've done this before. Jessica noticed I wasn't comfortable but she attributed it to my ankle, since I sprained it, ironically, on a concrete curb on a wheelchair ramp. I paid for the coffee and the bagels and we went to sit down. After I'd poured my coffee I popped again and felt great.
I'd decided that I wanted a real breakfast so we decided to hit up Denny's by Countryside Mall. When we left to go, it came on again, this time a little worse. It stretched from my armpits to my chest and down the insides of my arms. Halfway to Denny's, it popped again and I was again golden.
We got there and it was getting bad. I told the waitress that there were two of us, and asked for a glass of orange juice, since it seemed to my like I was having a bit of an odd sugar problem, like I was out of whack. This time, the pain went across my chest, down the insides of both arms, had caused the outside of my left hand to "sting", and had creeped out of my armpits and up to the tops of my shoulders. The arrhythmia was worsening and it felt like there was a weight on the top half of my heart. After taking one sip of my juice and realizing it had zero to do with blood sugar, I tossed my car keys onto the table and told Jessica "We're going to Mease. You're driving."
"Right now?"
"Yes."
She threw a dollar on the table as I limped my way to the door. Remember, I'd sprained my ankle a couple of days before.
We got to the ER at Mease Countryside hospital, the closest one to where we were, and they put me on a portable EKG machine. Some of the readings were elevated, so the nurse turned to her compatriot and said "This looks like a heart attack..."
They whisked me to an exam room and the whole hospital apparently joined them. Before one could sneeze I had my shirt off and there were two IVs started, one in each arm. I asked for Jessica, and after I'd asked a few times, they went and got her out of the waiting room. They wouldn't tell her squat since we're not married yet. She came into the room and I got to tell her: "Guess what, babe! I'm the youngest in my family ever to have a heart attack." I was not as jovial as this sounds.
So now I have a stent in my left anterior descending artery, part of the "widowmaker" family of arteries supplying the heart. I am on 4 different medications, not including the nitroglycerin tabs for under my tongue should things feel a little hairy.
I'm 36, ffs. I quit smoking quite a while ago and we try to eat as healthy as possible. My cholesterol wasn't horribly bad... not great, but not bad, either.
But I'm still here to type this post. I survived.
(Incidentally, the whole "left arm" thing is only one set of possible symptoms. I didn't feel that at *all*. What I felt will likely not be what the next person feels, and if it should ever (oh hell no) happen to me again, it will likely not feel the same.)
I woke up on Saturday with my right arm feeling a little "light," for lack of a better word. It was a little earlier than usual for a Saturday morning. I walked out and turned on my computer, then realized there was nothing I particularly wanted to do with it, so I shut it off. During this period, Jessica also woke up. We decided to go to Einstein for our weekly coffee and bagel fix.
I felt worse on the way over, like I used to feel when I was 20 and drinking wine coolers, which were what I could most often get at the time. My armpits felt just like that - icy and hot at the same time, my heart was a little arrhythmic, etc. Just like back then. As it always has done in the pat, it "popped," and went away. I felt great.
We get to Einstein and I didn't feel so good again. This time it was just a little worse. Again, nothing to worry about, we've done this before. Jessica noticed I wasn't comfortable but she attributed it to my ankle, since I sprained it, ironically, on a concrete curb on a wheelchair ramp. I paid for the coffee and the bagels and we went to sit down. After I'd poured my coffee I popped again and felt great.
I'd decided that I wanted a real breakfast so we decided to hit up Denny's by Countryside Mall. When we left to go, it came on again, this time a little worse. It stretched from my armpits to my chest and down the insides of my arms. Halfway to Denny's, it popped again and I was again golden.
We got there and it was getting bad. I told the waitress that there were two of us, and asked for a glass of orange juice, since it seemed to my like I was having a bit of an odd sugar problem, like I was out of whack. This time, the pain went across my chest, down the insides of both arms, had caused the outside of my left hand to "sting", and had creeped out of my armpits and up to the tops of my shoulders. The arrhythmia was worsening and it felt like there was a weight on the top half of my heart. After taking one sip of my juice and realizing it had zero to do with blood sugar, I tossed my car keys onto the table and told Jessica "We're going to Mease. You're driving."
"Right now?"
"Yes."
She threw a dollar on the table as I limped my way to the door. Remember, I'd sprained my ankle a couple of days before.
We got to the ER at Mease Countryside hospital, the closest one to where we were, and they put me on a portable EKG machine. Some of the readings were elevated, so the nurse turned to her compatriot and said "This looks like a heart attack..."
They whisked me to an exam room and the whole hospital apparently joined them. Before one could sneeze I had my shirt off and there were two IVs started, one in each arm. I asked for Jessica, and after I'd asked a few times, they went and got her out of the waiting room. They wouldn't tell her squat since we're not married yet. She came into the room and I got to tell her: "Guess what, babe! I'm the youngest in my family ever to have a heart attack." I was not as jovial as this sounds.
So now I have a stent in my left anterior descending artery, part of the "widowmaker" family of arteries supplying the heart. I am on 4 different medications, not including the nitroglycerin tabs for under my tongue should things feel a little hairy.
I'm 36, ffs. I quit smoking quite a while ago and we try to eat as healthy as possible. My cholesterol wasn't horribly bad... not great, but not bad, either.
But I'm still here to type this post. I survived.
(Incidentally, the whole "left arm" thing is only one set of possible symptoms. I didn't feel that at *all*. What I felt will likely not be what the next person feels, and if it should ever (oh hell no) happen to me again, it will likely not feel the same.)
Sunday, September 26, 2010
It starts over again!
Tonight I was watching a re-run of I Am Legend on some random cable channel and I got to re-watch my favorite scene in the movie. It's right in the beginning when Will Smith is hunting on "Mustang-back". It starts with the shot from the back of the herd of deer in downtown Manhattan. They're running from him and he's taking potshots. It ends with the buck he has a bead on being taken by a lioness in the middle of the street.
I love that scene. It's urban beauty. It's how I'd like to see New York next time I have to drive through it.
Hi, I'm Glen, and this is my blog. It's the first blog I've ever used but it's not the first time I've used it. This is my third go-round.
I've grown sick of a lot of things, from being told what to do to owing money to people I've never met. I'm paying rent to have shelter and I'm having to go to a grocery store to give money in order to feed myself and my fiancée. That's not right in my book. Basic human needs should not be served in trade. Luxuries could be, maybe, but not basic needs.
That in itself would bring me to a huge discussion (read: rant) about some of the things I've begun to see wrong after reading John Zerzan, Daniel Quinn, Marshall Sahlins, and others. I've noted many of the ideas they espouse seem to lie very close with the things I thought myself when I was a little younger.
I was always unable to articulate them properly, and now I know why: I needed to do a lot of research. It seems that these three authors have done most of that research for me and have decided to publish it all for the purpose of making my own belief system easily available to all, unlike my feeble attempts at dissemination when asked for my opinions on religion and politics just a scant dozen years ago. I'd like to thank them for that; they communicate far, far better than I can.
It's not just them that I've been reading. I've also been reading a lot of papers available at http://theanarchistlibrary.org/ that have struck a chord with me. Not all of them have, of course, and some of them I stressfully disagree with, but a fairly large percentage of the authors there also get the message across better than I can. The rest of them are pedantic assholes¹ who believe that there are no words with fewer than five syllables worth reading, of course.²
I want to rewild. I'm not an eco-anarchist, but I am; I'm not anti-technology, but I'm a luddite. I admit it. I didn't used to be, and I even went to school for computer programming. I still do it occasionally. But that's not what I want to do anymore. I'm not getting any younger, but I still can't afford to have kids. Is there something wrong with that? Yeah, I think so. I still can't teach them to be survivable should something happen to me or their mom. That's just wrong, and I aim to correct it. So I want to rewild.
I've seen some great signatures on forum posts recently that just about sum it up:
"For millions of years, man hunted and fished for his living. And we thought we could improve on that?"
"If God did Not want us to eat animals why did he make them out of meat?"
"'The future will soon be a thing of the past' -George Carlin"
Yo.
¹If I hear another pretentious jackboot use a seventy-three syllable word ending in "-ism" without referring to himself in the same sentence, I'm going to cause him to lose teeth.
²Yeah, you know who you are. If you can't bring it to the level of the common Joe, you don't understand it well enough to be talking about it in the first place. I applaud your effort but I'm afraid I'm unable to pay attention to you.
I love that scene. It's urban beauty. It's how I'd like to see New York next time I have to drive through it.
Hi, I'm Glen, and this is my blog. It's the first blog I've ever used but it's not the first time I've used it. This is my third go-round.
I've grown sick of a lot of things, from being told what to do to owing money to people I've never met. I'm paying rent to have shelter and I'm having to go to a grocery store to give money in order to feed myself and my fiancée. That's not right in my book. Basic human needs should not be served in trade. Luxuries could be, maybe, but not basic needs.
That in itself would bring me to a huge discussion (read: rant) about some of the things I've begun to see wrong after reading John Zerzan, Daniel Quinn, Marshall Sahlins, and others. I've noted many of the ideas they espouse seem to lie very close with the things I thought myself when I was a little younger.
I was always unable to articulate them properly, and now I know why: I needed to do a lot of research. It seems that these three authors have done most of that research for me and have decided to publish it all for the purpose of making my own belief system easily available to all, unlike my feeble attempts at dissemination when asked for my opinions on religion and politics just a scant dozen years ago. I'd like to thank them for that; they communicate far, far better than I can.
It's not just them that I've been reading. I've also been reading a lot of papers available at http://theanarchistlibrary.org/ that have struck a chord with me. Not all of them have, of course, and some of them I stressfully disagree with, but a fairly large percentage of the authors there also get the message across better than I can. The rest of them are pedantic assholes¹ who believe that there are no words with fewer than five syllables worth reading, of course.²
I want to rewild. I'm not an eco-anarchist, but I am; I'm not anti-technology, but I'm a luddite. I admit it. I didn't used to be, and I even went to school for computer programming. I still do it occasionally. But that's not what I want to do anymore. I'm not getting any younger, but I still can't afford to have kids. Is there something wrong with that? Yeah, I think so. I still can't teach them to be survivable should something happen to me or their mom. That's just wrong, and I aim to correct it. So I want to rewild.
I've seen some great signatures on forum posts recently that just about sum it up:
"For millions of years, man hunted and fished for his living. And we thought we could improve on that?"
"If God did Not want us to eat animals why did he make them out of meat?"
"'The future will soon be a thing of the past' -George Carlin"
Yo.
¹If I hear another pretentious jackboot use a seventy-three syllable word ending in "-ism" without referring to himself in the same sentence, I'm going to cause him to lose teeth.
²Yeah, you know who you are. If you can't bring it to the level of the common Joe, you don't understand it well enough to be talking about it in the first place. I applaud your effort but I'm afraid I'm unable to pay attention to you.
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