Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Good News



I snapped this photo of the sunset tonight as we were coming home from Wichita where I had a follow up with the cardiologist. I have been dreading this appointment, but I got good news. This morning when I took my blood pressure it was the first time since surgery that my heart has been beating regular, with no pauses.

The doctor today told me not to worry about pauses, as long as I felt okay when it was happening. I had read pauses and skipped beats were considered something that didn't require treatment and I guess that's his assessment too.

I have a slow pulse rate, as did my mom, and both my brothers. This seems to me to indicate it's genetic. Normally, they consider a slow pulse rate a good thing. But when I was in the hospital, everyone kept questioning it. I kept saying it was always low. They kept ignoring me. Finally, today, he asked about the readings of 48 for pulse rate and how I felt when it was like that. I assured him I felt perfectly normal when my heart rate is in the 40s and 50s. When it's in the 70s it feels fast to me. Finally, he listened and said, "well, as long as you feel normal, that's fine. You might have to have a pacemaker later, when you get older." Like a person who had surgery three weeks ago today wants to hear anything about surgery. But, at least it was surgery in the nebulous "later."

Overall it went well and I don't have to dread it anymore, which is nice. I have a follow up with the surgeon on Thursday. Hopefully that will go smoothly too. I anticipate he will release me then.

I'm too tired to write about much else tonight. It's beddy bye time for me. I am exhausted after today. It's the first time I've had this long of a stretch out and about since surgery. Time to rest.
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Check www.patsyterrell.com for the blog, art, and more. Friend me on facebook.com. Follow me at twitter.com. All text and photos on this website are copyright Patsy Terrell, unless otherwise noted. None are to be used without permission. Thank you.


Dinner at Linda's and Great Conversation



Linda invited the Chicks and friends over for dinner tonight and it was so much fun. We never have an opportunity to engage in casual conversation like we did tonight and it was really interesting.

This is a small group of very intelligent women and the topics were wide ranging. We had some thought provoking conversation and some big laughs.

Of course, one of the main topics of conversation was Rebecca Ryan's speech at the chamber dinner last week. I think everyone around the table was there that night and it was great to hear people's observations. I am always curious to hear what these women think. They are great thinkers and give me a different viewpoint.



In many different circumstances I am often the odd person out, with completely different views, but in this group people don't necessarily take that to be a negative thing, which is nice.

We had a lovely time. Linda had gone the extra mile with everything and it was a great night.



I was struck again tonight that I wish I knew how to fit in better. This isn't about tonight specifically, but just in general. I don't seem to know how to think the "right" way. Things that are obvious to other people make no sense to me and vice versa.

This isn't anything new. I've never been able to fit into group situations very well because once I say what I think about almost any situation, people  get uncomfortable, because I am rarely in sync with the majority. I try to ask questions to understand others viewpoints, but that seems to just make people defensive. I don't know how to explain my viewpoints because they're often "intuitive" to me. My brain just doesn't seem to come to the same conclusions other people's do.

We were talking tonight about how much we identify with where we live, as in what town or county or state you're from. I think of myself as "living in the midwest" because I view the boundaries of states and counties and towns as largely arbitrary. I was the only one in the group for whom this was true.

Boundaries for such things were once determined by how long it took to ride a horse from one place to another. To me that has no bearing on our world today and therefore should be reexamined. Why do we still want to live with these archaic divisions when we could be living as a group that is all working together for the good of everyone instead of competing with each other for limited resources in this arbitrary system?

I understand the "normal" way to think of this is that it's a system that has worked for a long time and is a huge economic factor because government is a big employer in many places. But in Patsy-world we could just rethink the whole situation and the money that's being put into communities through government could be coming in a different way, bringing with it different services or products. I don't understand why we don't want to expand our worlds.

Of course, I have absolutely NO idea how to affect that change. And maybe that's the problem - others are just more accepting of the fact that change is very complex. I always believe in my la-la-happy-world that everyone will see the wisdom of rethinking something and jump on board. Of course, this is not true. But, I just can't let go of it because to do so means to accept that possibility is lacking. And I want to live in a world full of possibility. 

I have a whole long list of things that make no sense to me - from athletics being tied to schools to health insurance being tied to employment. But, as usual, I seem to be the only one who sees these things as illogical and therefore worthy of rethinking.

Sometimes I wish I could just think through something and come to the conclusion everyone else comes to. I might not necessarily want to accept that as the gospel truth, but maybe I would at least understand the world around me then. Because, frankly, the world makes little to no sense to me most of the time. I am out here, floundering around, trying to not make a fool of myself, with no understanding whatsoever of what "the norm" is. But at least there is always something interesting to think about.
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Check www.patsyterrell.com for the blog, art, and more. Friend me on facebook.com. Follow me at twitter.com. All text and photos on this website are copyright Patsy Terrell, unless otherwise noted. None are to be used without permission. Thank you.