#thankfully my soothing protocols also work on me. mostly. BUT WHAT A DAY.

[pigeonfancier]

Heart updates! Finally got the heart monitor off a week or so ago, which was great, because first set of adhesives were melting my fucking skin. The company were sweethearts and sent me new adhesives, which.. were fine for the first week, and then started doing the same, because adhesives are just fucking hell. Thankfully, it’s all healed over well, haha, and it was kind of worth it.

I am perpetually in a state of mild suspicion towards my own experiences, because - am I genuinely uncomfortable, or am I just easily bothered? Am I in pain, or am I just wallowing? But now I have ~*official results*~, and validation that my heart does not like filling up properly, that does hurt like hell, and the wiring is kind of fucked for reasons that I’m going to have to do more tests for. And the wiring is fucked in a way that does not, remarkably~!, resolve itself by “growing out of it” (at 30, somehow). Validation of the issue.. and validation that a lot of doctors are fucking assholesss.

Also, confirmation that I probably do nooot have any of the “you will drop dead” issues from this gene, so woo (knock on wood). It’s progressive, so I have to keep coming in for fucking ever, I guess, but like a lot of things, it’s just a case of monitoring, and slapping on some duct tape as soon as problems present. So that’s nice.

But: more tests! Once my insurance approves them, anyway, because they’re generally fairly great, but they’ve got a bee up their ass over wanting the tests done in a specific order. This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, if it weren’t for the fact my cardio wants it all done at a specific hospital, and the waitlist for that.. already has the most accessible test scheduled for the end of April. And it wouldn’t be a problem if they didn’t decide they only wanted tests in a specific order twenty four hours before I went in for a test.

I was kind of banking on the idea I’d have all of these tests done by July, and either have a pacemaker or medication to knock out this issue, whichever fucking one, but. I refuse to be stressed over this, haha. It’ll get resolved, they’ll fix this up, and then I guess.. they’ll test me for POTS, because my view of that remains “this is irrelevant to the greater issue and idgaf”, but they really want to. So at this point, I will roll with what-the-fuck-ever they want if they can fix the overall issue, tbhhh.

In related news:  my mother remains batshit, which I generally expect, but I am still a little mystified by. Cutting this section, because She Is A Lot.

She’s spent my entire life arguing that I do not have any cardiac problems! Several family members and myself remember that I went to a cardiologist as a kid, but it’s about 25/75 on if she’ll actually admit that, and her stories do not stay consistent. When I got the genetic test saying, hey, heart issue!, she was dismissive of it, and the past year or so has been her consistently trying to pick fights with people who mentioned it, arguing that everyone has heart issues and I should get over mine because it was getting very inconvenient, and occasionally inpromptu informing me that, actually, this is all caused by a lack of exercise, or some other spontaneous decision she pulled out of her ass. Or from not eating enough, because I have chronic pancreatitis.. but perhaps I don’t actually have that, and I’m just food-averse?

Ignore the hundreds of dollars of cooking supplies and huge chunks of time just fucking around and experimenting with recipes, I suppose.

It’s been whatever! I am long, long past the point where her opinions hold weight for me, beyond occasional fits of outrage. But once my sister got confirmed as having the same heart issue on a different scale, and once tests started coming in for me, she has switched tracks.. to saying that she has a heart issue, too, and it’s like mine, but with higher spikes! And she just never noticed it, because it just happens, and it’s really quite easy to ignore, but she guesses she’ll go to a cardiologist, just to see --

We inherited the problem gene from her, and her entire family does have severe heart issues - and she herself has aneurysm issues - but I’m unimpressed. Between that and her flipflopping from “you don’t have allergies!” to “well, if you have allergies, then I probably have allergies, so I should ALSO start telling people I should avoid your allergens (of the food that I do not like, do not eat, and do not have any desire to eat)” this year, I’m just lifting my hands from that entire topic. When she brings it up, I’ve been just telling her to go talk to her doctor, get tests, and then disengaging from the topic, because.. man, haha. There’s a lot going on there, and I do not have the psychiatric degree nor the inclination to really dig into this beyond the side-long “huh, these problems really are only relevant when they can impact her, huh?”.

My dad is a little better, at least! He had a panic attack when I told him about all of this, haha, which was.. something, but now he’s taken up just consistently texting me reminders on everything. Have I eaten recently? Have I gotten electrolytes? I should go drink some Gatoraid. Have I taken my meds? GO TAKE MY MEDS. Remember if I’m going out to drink some electrolytes!

He’s kind of a pain in a different sort of way about all of this health shit, but I do appreciate the fact I don’t have to really second-guess him much - when he’s being an asshole, it’s pretty on the nose. And he’s being genuinely helpful, because I do forget shit a lot on bad days, so. #okay!

#the mysterious fainting waif disease #the last-minute insurance shit was so fucking tedious yesterday #at one point I was on the phone with two different people from the same hospital trying to get it sorted #then insurance called and I had to get three calls from three different fucking departments all saying 'WE'RE SO SORRY DON'T COME IN.' #but you know what #my customer service voice is GREAT and everyone was very sweet #and I am always mildly amused by my ability to switch mental tracks #start of the call: internal shrieking because I'm stressed the fuck out at this point #thirty seconds into the call: oh no! this OTHER person is stressed out! #initiate soothing protocols! remind them that all issues are transient and don't worry we will figure this out as a TEAM #and there is NO NEED to be STRESSED 💖 because we are all ~DOING OUR BEST~ #five minutes after the call: external shrieking because I'm stressed the fuck out #thankfully my soothing protocols also work on me. mostly. BUT WHAT A DAY.