You know, the old adage “No news is good news” is pretty much correct from what I’ve experienced in my life. And these past 5-6 months that I haven’t written to anyone, really have been mostly good times.

I did lose a close cousin to cancer, and a close uncle from other illness complications, but other than that, life has been treating me fairly well since Christmas. And then a very close uncle of Marcus’s passed away from bone cancer last week. That upset us a lot, since we both cared a great deal for him. Not a lot of great misery or mass stories to explain how things are going. Life was just kind of rolling along fairly level and while I wasn’t exactly having parties every week, I was managing to have a fair life from week to week and thought if life continued this way, I could tolerate things for quite some time this way.

Unfortunately, last Saturday morning, my life took a sharp turn for the worse! And worse it continued!

I started out Saturday by passing out, first thing in the morn. Then I had some funny feelings during the morning, and finally went to the ER because they wouldn’t quit. The funny feelings turned out to be heart pauses where my heart was actually stopping for seconds at a time. I’ve had them before, just never knew what they were called, nor what was causing them. Except the big ones that I’ve had in the past. Those were coming from having food or drink and/or an air bubble try to pass each other in my esophagus (I would often pass out from the major ones). I had a throat scope and a stretching of the tight spot in hopes of making it go away, but it didn’t do any good, if anything, it made me have more and they were worse. The throat specialist didn’t seem to think too much of them and didn’t really think they were any big deal.

At first on Sat. they thought the problem was a combination of meds, one of which tends to build up in the system and if continually taken with another, they can cause this type of reaction, so they thought they would just watch me for a day or so, and switch my meds, and see how it went.

Well, then the heart pauses got identified, and they said they needed to watch them a bit closer to see for sure what is going on, and after having a 7-second heart pause, they told me there was no point in discussing it, I needed a pacemaker! So off to Elkhart (next town over) where they have very highly rated heart teams.

Fortunately they are one of the highest rated heart hospitals in the state, so I felt pretty secure in their hands. So, Tuesday I got the pacemaker, and Wed I came home. I was also told to see my pulmonologist about my oxygen sats over night and during the day. During the day, my oxygen runs between 90-96% and at night it runs mostly between 80-90% and they say that is what is making me so tired. I’m hoping that this will really be a boost to my energy and enjoyment of life.

I now have this machine in my living room, with an emergency tank of oxygen. The machine extracts the pure oxygen from the regular room air. I only have to have it on at night, no carrying around a portable tank so, that’s at least one break! This is supposed to help me feel better during the day time, whereas I had been getting very tired so much of the time.

So, now in addition to my monthly Zometa treatments that cause me to have a major pain kickback for 3-6 days each month, I now have these new toys to play with! Isn’t life fun some weeks? hahahahaha it’s surely a good thing I can keep my sense of humor about all this.

Well, I guess that’s all for now, I surely hope I’ve made this eventful enough to make up for all the nice simple quiet months of much of nothing I’ve had for the past 6 months :)  If it’s alright with the rest of you, I think I’ll go back to having those dull boring months and leave the exciting stuff for someone else! Don’t forget, while we can always talk here, we do have my blog for lots of chit chatting at Special Pages By Sherry  where I hope to get some new pics of my grand babies up soon. They have really grown!

Blessings to you all, and may you all have a wonderful summer! Shoot off a firecracker or two for me this weekend, I’m sure I won’t feel like it at all, but I’ll hopefully get to see a few sky rockets if we drive to the right side of town

Sherry