Release

Yesterday morning we trekked out to the doctor who inserted the pacemaker into Hubby's chest. We didn't leave the house in a very good mood, however. 

I was grumpy and kept grumbling under my breath about how I had to wait on Hubby hand and foot because he won't walk to the kitchen anymore.  And he was grumpy because his blood sugar levels had been high for two days and the day before he had been so worn out he had never really gotten out of bed.  He slept most of the day.

I told him in no uncertain terms that drinking a gallon of orange juice a week would NOT help his blood sugar.  Hubby does not take well to hearing lectures.  He yelled (and Hubby can yell better than anyone except my mother) back that he needed a bottle of water from the kitchen to take his meds.  I returned him yell for yell that he had an open soda on the desk and to just use that.  He yelled back that he would never, ever drink from that soda because 1) it wasn't his and 2) he had no idea how long it had been sitting there.

The dogs scooted from the room as quick as a wink and went to stand by the front door, looking forlorn.  They know when to get out of the way.  

I gave up but left mumbling that, of course, the soda was his -- I don't leave my cans sitting around the house; I take my cans back to the frig or I dump them; he's the coot that won't go to the kitchen.  I brought him the water, barely refraining from tossing it at him from the hallway. 

We drove to the park in utter silence; I walked the dogs (of course, he can't get out of the car).  Poor boys were noticeably subdued on our jaunt around the pine trees and baseball diamonds. 

Then Hubby had to have a McDonald's breakfast sandwich because I hadn't fixed him breakfast at home before we left the house.  And with it, just to prove me wrong, he had the giant-sized orange juice (which isn't juice but some kind of orange drink full of sugar).

Finally we arrived at the cardiologist.  I had to park the car so he could just walk in the front door instead of taking 50 extra steps from the parking lot (are you sensing a trend here in my mood?).  In the office we had to wait 45 minutes to see the doctor.  We waited in silence. 

By the time we got back to the lab to do the testing, his blood pressure was sky high.  Everyone was scurrying around worrying about him -- and he kept looking at me, saying, "But yesterday my pressure was normal!" They tested his pacemaker to make sure it was functioning properly but since the lab room was so small I had to wait outside in the hallway.  By the time they were finished, Hubby was apologizing for my having to stand 30 minutes during the test; he knows that standing is very difficult for me (I can walk but I don't just stand still without a lot of pain). 

Then the nurse practitioner moved us to a bigger room so I could sit and they did the EKG and talked with Hubby about how he was feeling.  He gave his normal responses, "Everything is fine; I feel fine; I'm doing fine. It's all fine." After chatting with Hubby for a bit, she turned to me and asked, "Okay, how do you see things?"

I explained that we had hoped Hubby would have made a miraculous recovery with the pacemaker regulating his heart rate but we were learning that wasn't going to be the case.  Though disappointed we were dialing back our expectations and getting happier with the results we were seeing.  Hubby was able to do water aerobics three times a week, he had handled four years of taxes which he hadn't been able to cope with for the last several years, and though he had down times every three or four days, we were making slow progress.  Also he had finally agreed to have them scope his throat next week; something he had continued to avoid as long as he was fearful about dialing back on his meds for the throat procedure.   

Hubby chimed in with his own tales then and we talked for another 20 minutes.  At the end, the nurse pulled out the blood pressure cuff and retook the reading -- and Hubby was at 127 over 67 -- a nice, normal pressure. 

Give us some time and we have learned how to calm down and find an even keel, and now-a-days, we just don't stay angry about the stupid things in life. 

The upshot was that the cardiologist who performed the pacemaker surgery released Hubby back to his own cardiologist because the surgery was a grand success.  We drove home together as if nothing untoward had happened that morning. So it's all good, one way or another.