Anticipation anxiety
Well, here I sit trolling the internet, trying to alleviate my anxiety over the upcoming medical test on my horizon.
It all started about three Thursdays ago with a sore throat.
I warned my spouse that I was about to enter into the awful zone of miserable coughing and malaise — which I did. I’ve been there before.
But this time it was different. It seemed to get worse. Short of breath, achiness everywhere.
A consult with my primary care physician, who, by the way is the ebst — he calls to discuss your situation on his day off — led me to Urgent care where I was diagnosed with bronchitis and sinusitis.
Antibiotics in hand, I thought, “Well, that’s over.”
But it wasn’t because that very night while preparing one of my wonderful dinners for my husband, which he will attest to, angel hair spaghetti and homemade garlicy marinara sauce, I became much worse. Big time difficulty breathing.
So, it was off to St. Joe’s ED where Dr. Kishani Heller arranged for every test known to rule out heart attack, deep vein thrombosis, heart failure, pleural effusion, etc.
With all of those vials of blood perking up in the lab and the CT scan, they were sure to find something, but the something wasn’t much of anything to explain why I was having breathing problems, which seemed to dissipate or come and go.
“You need to have a stress test,” said the very personable Dr. Heller. “Call your cardiologist tomorrow and get one STAT.”
Hey, I watch enough TV doctor shows to know what that means. So, I did just that and today, I had the stress test.
- My highly recommended and very charming cardiologist, Michael Fischi, MD tells me that there is a small abnormality in one of the vessels in my heart and he asks me if I would like to have a heart catheterization.
Oh, my! This is not like making a decision about whether to have cream in my coffee.
What does “small” mean? Does it mean diminutive? Inconsequential? Do I have time to go to medical school to figure this one out?
We discussed the pros and cons and what he would recommend. After all, if I have plumbing problems at home, I count on the expertise of the person I hired to fix them. What do I know about plumbing…or heart catheterization? And then, in the back of my mind there was the thought that the “small” abnormality probably wasn’t critical or I wouldn’t have a choice. Or…maybe not?
So, now with three new medicines, two of which advise me not to drive or operative heavy equipment until I know how I will react to them, I am awaiting a call to tell me when I will have a catheter threaded through a vein to my heart. Yikes.
So, what was the reasonable thing to do? Should I worry about the fact that I have developed a cardiac condition that warrants this test? Or should I be glad that it was discovered? Should I worry about all of the “rare” side effects of the meds or the test itself? Of course not.
But I am. Probably more than I worried about my diagnosis of breast cancer almost 12 years ago.
Then I was occupied with my job as interim director of the Samaritan Center and my daughter’s wedding only two months away.
Now, I have only plants to put in the ground and meals to cook…not enough busyness and strangely enough, I find myself needing time off from the weekly things that I’ve scheduled just to process this stuff.
There is the immediacy of heart disease risk as opposed to the slower pace of a cancer diagnosis. Then I was so busy that I scheduled worry in at 4 p.m. every day and found that I didn’t have time to worry. Now I do have time and it bites.
Monday, the day of the test, which Dr. Fischi assures me will be painless and easy, which may result in having a stent or stents added to the already huge load of metal in my aging body, is not coming fast enough, or perhaps is coming slowly enough for me to process all of this and come to the understanding that knowing and doing something positive is better than not knowing and the bad results that can bring.
Get older is a process too, one that you are mostly unprepared for. There can be a tendency to obsess when things happen for which you aren’t totally prepared.
Giving up the freedom that good health allows, accepting the restrictions that waning physical abilities bring are not things that you can practice. But, as adults we have to accept and adjust. I am adjusting, just not fast enough for me.
No one has, so far, said that I can’t eat chocolate. So there is that and tonight my cardiologist who was attending the same dinner as I, came over, gave me a hug and told me that all will be well.
So, there is very much that.
