Making the most of it

We might have come to the end of the Ambien saga. Amanda got the right sleeping meds last night. A doctor who was on the night before knew the story, so he came to check. I said 10 at 10, and he was like, yeah, okay. 10mg at 10 pm; I’m going to pound that into everyone’s head that needs it. I had been forceful with a few teams in the day about it, saying someone kept taking it off. Our cardiologist said he’d keep an eye out for the Ambien police.

The doctor who knew the saga was on overnight and came to talk to us. He’s the only night resident, or fellow for that matter that has come in at night. He’s very methodical in thinking and genuinely wanting to help. He asked what he could do to help us. We spoke of Amanda’s rate coming down but still being high. I mentioned that it seems the same increase of 15-20 beats a minute over baseline, whatever that may be, makes her chest heart. The doctor said that made no sense but made perfect sense simultaneously! It’s logical but not medically backed; it’s a common sense thing to me but can’t be found in a book anywhere. I get the feeling that some are questioning the pain; they can’t understand it, even though it seems easy to us. Her rate goes up, and she has chest pain, simple to us but complex to a doctor. Amanda’s medical history is filled with things like this: she’s special like that! 

I thought StarBs would be closed for Christmas, but they were open till 4 pm. When I came back up from home, Amanda asked me to bring a gingerbread house kit we had at the house. It was left over from last year, but she still wanted to do one. So before I left to get coffee, I set her up to build the house. In typical Starbucks fashion, they were out of Christmas cups by Christmas! But Santa brought oat milk, so Amanda was happy. It was good coffee this morning, too.

When I returned, Amanda was talking to a doctor. He was talking about her chest pain and rate. He also mentioned changing things. I was about to say that Dr. Nair, our cardiologist, had said this and that, and we’d let him make the decisions! But since I came in mid-conversation, I held back. It turns out he would be rounding with Dr Nair. Good thing I didn’t fire on him! 

Amanda finished her gingerbread house. She wasn’t happy with it, the icing didn’t stick well and was hard to squeeze out. I kneaded it for a while, then put it under the sheets with Amanda to warm up! Everyone coming in the room still thinks it looks good. I told her it was the best in the hospital; she said how many were there, though!

Amanda and I had our first spat. She’s waiting to get pain meds till her pain gets up too much. I’ve been telling the teams the oral pain med doesn’t work for her chest pain. So she hasn’t been taking it and waits till it gets bad and has to have the IV pain med. We’ve been through this too much; I know we’ll have issues getting out of here like this. I don’t want to end up in the ER or, worse, coming back to Houston. We need a fix; the doctors need to hear it from her more than me, though. 

Our cardiologist came by with the fellow from before. Dr. Nair said the fellow was a budding electrophysiologist, think electrical heart doctor. That made his discussion with us earlier about fixing the rate more understandable. We spoke more about the increase rate issue, which seems to cause the chest pain. The cardiologist said he didn’t want to give us PTSD but mentioned an ablation; this is where they target a node in your heart and cauterize it. Amanda had seven ablations prior to her first open heart. All of the traffic caused scar tissue to form in her SVC, and she ended up needing a bypass graft. From there, it was one thing after another many relate back to all of the EP studies, ablations, and cath procedures. Essentially, too much in and out of her heart. So, needless to say, the word ablation does trigger PTSD.

The cardiologist and EP fellow spend quite a bit of time with us, mostly speaking of the rate. I voiced concern about the ablation. The EP fellow said this would be a more targeted ablation, fixing a specific rate if they were to find one. Not just blasting her sinus node with multiple ablations as before. Amanda said she was ok treating a specific rhythm with an ablation if they found one. There was talk about an EP study, which is similar to the cath, but they go in and run tests on the heart’s electrical activity. The EP fellow’s boss, the electrophysiologist, will come by tomorrow to speak with us.

I also asked about the meds, and Amanda was more forth giving with her side. I gave recommendations on what she had taken before. I hope they get things swapped around. If she had some pain management in the background, hopefully, she would need fewer IV pain meds.

We ordered Chinese via DoorDash for lunch from a vegan place we’d been to years ago. I could add drinks from Sonic to the order for no extra charge. Amanda had been wanting some, so I added a couple. Once the driver picked up the drinks, he added a picture of them to the app. The drinks were on the floorboard of his car right next to his shoes!

We have been watching Christmas movies all day. The first was Christmas Vacation, followed by Elf, and a newer one from Netflix, The Christmas Chronicles. Then we just listened to Christmas hymns until we had a visitor. 

Ryder is one of our former youth group students and the son of our very good friends. We love him like a son. He and I have stayed close and speak often. He lives in Spring, which is about 20 minutes away. So he stopped by and stayed a couple of hours. He even came bearing a gift, some freshly made Christmas crack, which was very good. 

I already had a dinner order scheduled via Uber Eats at a nicer place. If it hadn’t been for the dinner order, he’d have stayed all night talking! I had a few things to take to the Yukon to make more space in our room. He helped me carry them out. It would have been a long walk for him there, and back to the garage he parked in, so I had him drive me over to my garage. We unloaded the stuff up our car and he came over like he was going to say good by. I said you gotta chauffeur me back, I need a ride to the front door of the hospital!

On the way back in the lobby, I noticed a Christmas miracle. Our savior was born! No crib for a bed, little baby J laid down his sweet head.

The nurse wanted do start a magnesium drip, but Amanda asked to wait till after we ate. Our dinner arrived shortly after, reasonably close to the scheduled time. We figured we were in the hospital for Christmas and would at least have a good dinner! We shared a ribeye with a ton of sides, saving dessert for a late-night snack. The star of the show was the lobster mac and cheese, followed closely by the steak and peppercorn sauce. It was a splurge, but we’re trying to make the most of a crappy Christmas. I sat on the bed with Amanda, and we dove into dinner. I was worried about a decent knife to cut the steak. They sent us plasticware but a real steak knife with a paper sheath, I was impressed.

After I got ready for bed and made my chair a bed, we opened Christmas presents. I piled what we had on the bed with Amanda, and she went through them. She had been raring to open the gifts. While the magnesium ran, Amanda got super hot, which typically happens with mag infusions, and it made her feel icky. I had turned the air down for Amanda when she got hot, but I got a little cold with shorts and no sweater. So, I bundled up with a gifted blanket picked out by one of the littles from church. She’d be mad that I was using and not Mrs. Amanda!

We settled in and had our cheesecake after she felt a little better. It was fabulous, one of the best cheesecakes we’ve ever had. It actually took the star of the show for dinner over the mac and cheese. We also watched The Star, an animated movie about a donkey with Mary and Joesph; it is one of my favorite newer Christmas movies and is just a cute movie.

I was telling Amanda, all things considered, this wasn’t that bad of a Christmas. Sure, we could sulk, but what good would that do? We were together, had a tree up, felt loved with all the cards we had on the wall, and had a couple of good meals in our bellies. God is good, we are blessed.