We all know what you're supposed to do when life gives you lemons, but what do you do if you ARE a lemon? Or, as Corey asked me yesterday, "Are you sure your parents aren't first cousins?"
While I am quite certain that my parents are not blood relations, I do believe my mom must have imbibed some wonky cough syrup a few too many time while incubating me 27 years ago.
The inflammation in my pericardial sac has been quite stubborn, so I went for a follow up to my cardiologist to see what our next course of action is. He scheduled an echo cardiogram to get a view of my heart without ripping me open and found something rather interesting. I suffer from a congenital heart defect known as Patent Foramen Ovale, or more commonly referred to as a hole in my heart. As much as 20% of us are born with a membrane not yet closed in our hearts, but in most people it heals when we are very small - either naturally or due to medication or surgery. Unfortunately, mine did not.
The leak in my heart is small, and he is confident that not only does it have nothing to do with my current inflammation, but also that nothing needs to immediately be done about it.
Later in life if I develop problems like arrhythmia or palpitations, they will surgically repair it. It does put me at higher risk for stroke and causes migraines (which I suffer from) so I can elect to have the surgery now, but I think we will handle things one at a time.
In other (and much more exciting) news the boy is being promoted! For those of you that aren't familiar, the military world doesn't work the way the civilian world does as far as promotions go. There is a massive points system in place that decides who gets promoted and when, and it is based on a number of things - the largest percentage of points being assigned to a test that rivals the SATs. Last year he missed being promoted by a heartbreaking 3 points, but this year we celebrated at 6 in the morning when we found his name on the list for Tech Sargeant! Unfortunately since he is pretty young for this position, he will be one of the later people promoted (somewhere between 8-10 months from now), but it will make a huge difference in his day to day duties and we couldn't be more excited. We may also soon have another exciting Air Force announcement to make, but will wait until it is made official.
This weekend we will make our traditional 4th of July trek up the mountain to see the fireworks with my parents, and I am excited to have 4 full days to hang out with my husband rather than our normal rushed weekend.
We hope everyone else has a great long weekend and stays safe too!
1 comment:
Good thing life isn't a contest of who has more physical ailments to be attended to (either natural, like you get to have fun with - or stupidity caused, as is the case with me) because you would probably be beating us all! Of course, from your stand point, not so bad a deal cause hey, you win!
I took physiology the first block of this summer and I'm in anatomy right now (second block) and reading about your heart makes me think, "hey, I studied that stuff, I kind of know what you're talking about!" The heart is an amazing little pump; that section of physiology made me consider going into cardiology - but I've already dragged out this school thing long enough, so I'm stickin with the PT thing - also very fun/interesting.
Congrats to the man with the promotion! I love our armed forces and highly respect and honor all they do and sacrifice to ensure my freedoms!
Hope everything gets figured out and fixed with your ticker Chris! you know, for a rickity ol "lemon", your sure do have a lot of great selling points! Get well!
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