January 24, 2020
The lab work today indicated my hemoglobin was low enough to receive the shot. No big deal… just a shot and a band-aid and I was back on the road. Well, I went across the road. Luckily, most of my appointments are all clustered in one area, near Lovelace Hospital downtown. The Heart Hospital, now owned by Lovelace, is right across the street from St. Joseph Square, where hematology/oncology is. It was a Friday afternoon but man, the staff at the Heart Hospital were all just in a pretty sour mood. The nurse or MA (I don’t know which she was) who took my vitals and did the EKG was alllll business. No “Hi how are you?” “How’s the weather?”, nothing. I hope that was an off-day for them.
The cardiologist was pretty nice and VERY good looking! I don’t know why that surprised me, but it did! He was definitely concerned about the near-fainting spells and didn’t seem as sure as my other providers that it was due to the kidney/anemia issues. He said my EKG was normal but he wanted an echocardiogram and for me to wear a heart monitor for two weeks. I got the echo and heart monitor appointments scheduled pretty quickly, but when it came to the follow up to go over all the results, it was impossible. We couldn’t find a date that both the doctor and I were free. We were looking well into the end of May when I just said forget it. He could call or message me if there was something we needed to follow up on.
The next day, Kyle and I went to an event we go to every year, a “Souper Bowl,” hosted by our local Roadrunner Food Bank. It’s so much fun, sampling soups and desserts from about 50 restaurants in town. I was having a great time when WHAM, another near-fainting spell. I found a place to sit. I was dizzy, nauseated, hot, and of course, had a runny nose. It didn’t last terribly long, maybe about 10 or 15 minutes. But that was really crazy, as I was not doing anything but standing there. It didn’t seem particularly warm in there or anything, so I don’t know what set it off. Very weird.
[Sidebar: support your local food banks! They do so much for communities. Hungry people, including children, don’t have the energy to help our communities thrive and grow. By helping your neighbors, you’re helping yourself too.]
I’d realized how crazy my schedule was getting between work and all these upcoming appointments. It was pretty overwhelming. Of course I had everything in my phone but I needed something bigger. So my anal-retentive self laminated a two pieces of paper to write all my appointments down on… monthly and weekly. They’re taped to my bathroom mirror. So far it’s working well.
Hemoglobin, 1/24/2020: 9.5
Low, Low, Low 