When I tell people about my experiences in the hospital when I was young, they often say, “That must have been scary.”
That must have been scary, I agree. However, I don’t remember being scared. I was so focused on trying to understand what was going on, connecting with others, and surviving the frequent hospitalizations and surgeries for my heart condition that I must have been disconnected from the fear.
I appreciate people saying, “That must have been scary.” That demonstrates empathy and allows me to acknowledge what I’ve been through. I may wish that people had said “that must have been scary” to me back then, but that must have been scary for them to do.
This morning, I woke up thinking about the phrase “that must have been scary” and decided to reframe that to “that must have been necessary.” Somehow, that makes things less scary for me, here and now.
Do you see anything that must have been scary or necessary in my images for today?
.
Learning something new, screenings, and breast exams: all scary AND necessary.
Here’s what I find on YouTube when I search for “that must have been scary.”
.
If you think that must have been scary searching through the videos that popped up for me on YouTube, you are correct. However, it was necessary for me to finish this blog post.
Thanks to all who help me deal with things that must have been scary, including YOU.
Here and now, I’m trying to make sense of things, including:
Why my INR level dipped dangerously low yesterday,
Why I thought to check my INR earlier than usual (thank goodness),
How it was so difficult to get the shots I needed to protect myself from having such a low INR from my local pharmacy,
Why I’m doing a better job administering those shots than some trained professionals did last week at a Georgia hospital when my INR was also dangerously low,
Why some people that I reach out to take so long getting back to me,
Why the repair of our upstairs bathroom is taking so long,
Why some days have so many National Day observances and other have so few,
Why so many people in the USA don’t exercise their right to vote,
Why so many people get fooled by toxic narcissists, and
How I continue to remain sane through all of this.
Yesterday, my dear friend Carol and I discussed how trying to make sense of things can lead to magical thinking.
For example, I’ve been trying to make sense of the unexpected and scary medical things I’ve been dealing with lately by magically thinking they might be the the result of:
my unexpectedly being reassured by a new cardiologist this month that my very unusual heart was serving me very well and should keep me alive for many years to come,
my not observing the Jewish High Holidays,
my boldly and confidently sharing my original song “Everybody‘s Somebody’s Asshole” with total strangers in Georgia and getting a delighted reaction, and
being “too” confident in general.
I’m wondering how you are trying to make sense of things (including this blog post) right now.
Please join me in trying to make sense of my images for today.
Thanks to the National Days website, now I’m making sense of National Seat Check Saturday.
Here’s what I find on YouTube when I search for “trying to make sense of things.”
Gratitude always helps me make sense of things, so thanks to those who visit this daily blog, including YOU!
the islands off the southeastern coast of Georgia,
the inside of a brain CT scan machine, and
the inside of a Georgia hospital.
You’ve never seen anybody as happy as I’ll be when I get out of this hospital and rejoin my vacation tour of the Georgia islands, which MIGHT be today.
Here are some images I assume you’ve never seen:
I’ve actually never seen the world through another’s eyes but I try to do that, every day.
Here’s what I find on YouTube when I search for “never seen.”
I’ve never seen Limoblaze before, but I’m very glad to see that video today.
You’ve most likely seen gratitude from me before, but you’ve never seen this particular image of thanks:
This Is Ann, Telling It As it is on a Tuesday In A hospital room, Thankful I’m Alive.
T.I.A. stands for Transient Ischemic Attack. The Incredible And Thorough Investigators At This Institution Are Thinking I, Ann, had a T.I.A. yesterday.
Terrifying Incident, Actually, That Included All The Indications of A stroke. This Is Absolutely not how This Individual Anticipated spending her vacation.
These Images Are what This Insomniac Accumulated yesterday:
Thanks In Admiration to Those Intrepidly Assisting yesterday — my Terrifically Intelligent Amiga Deb, the Emergency responders on Jekyll Island, the staff at this wonderful Georgia hospital, my Boston cardiologist Deeb Salem (who called in response to my email and talked to the doctor here) — and to Those I Adore (That Includes All of you!)
Yesterday, as I was trying to balance my needs with other people’s needs, I
balanced providing individual and group therapy at the Boston hospital where I work,
helped prepare my two wonderful co-workers who will be covering three of my groups while I’m on vacation for two weeks,
had the delicious macaroni and cheese at the hospital cafeteria for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic (because they only serve it on Fridays and I usually work remotely from my home on Fridays),
met with my new electrophysiologist/cardiologist, Dr. Peter Zimetbaum, at the hospital where I work, and
felt very relieved about how knowledgeable, encouraging, and willing Dr. Zimetbaum was to collaborate with my long-time cardiologist, Dr. Deeb Salem, who works at a different Boston hospital.
On balance, it was a terrific day.
Do you see balance in my images for today?
.
Leave it to today’s Daily Bitch to have the last word on balance.
Here’s what I find on YouTube when I search for “balance.”
“Two wrongs don’t make a right” was one of my late mother’s favorite sayings. Another favorite saying of my mother’s was “there’s a place for everything and everything in its place” so I think this is the place for today’s Daily Bitch Calendar.
It sure as hell would make me feel better right now to share a photo of my mother. It’s right that I coincidentally captured an image of my mother with my son Aaron yesterday when I took a picture of our cat, Joan (on the right).
Two humans — my husband Michael and I — were wrong in worrying that our old and fretful shelter cat Harley would never accept shelter cat Joan. Those two together definitely make a right.
There’s a place for everything and this is the place I’ll share a story about my mother and me and “two wrongs don’t make a right.” I was born with a heart that was wrong, which resulted in many hospitalizations and my needing pacemakers from a very young age. We didn’t know what kind of heart condition I had until my very right and still current cardiologist, Dr. Deeb Salem, figured out in the 1980’s that I had the very rare heart condition of congenitally corrected transposition of the great arteries (CCTGA). When Dr. Salem rightly described how my heart was very wrong in two different ways — (1) the aorta and the pulmonary arteries are switched and (2) the ventricles are also switched — and
that means all the blood ends up in the right place and
having just one of those wrongs would have killed me when I was born in 1953 because of what kinds of heart surgeries were available then,
I turned to my mother and said “You know how you always say ‘two wrongs don’t make a right?’ I guess not!”
There’s a place for everything and this is the place for me to say that I miss my mother and my father every day.
It’s right that many of my images for today have twos in them.
It seems wrong to me that onion rings and kissing — both very right in their own way — are celebrated on the same day.
Here’s what I find on YouTube when I search for “two wrongs don’t make a right.”
Yesterday, at an urgent care clinic, a doctor tried to convince me to go to a hospital emergency room to get a CAT scan for possible brain damage.
My brain was surprised by this because I had come to the urgent care clinic suspecting wrist and ankle damage after taking a rather spectacular fall on my daily walk, which was preceded by this tweet:
I’m not showing any signs of brain damage there, am I?
Anyway, because I’m on the blood thinner Coumadin, almost immediately after the fall giant bruises were appearing at all the points of contact I’d had with the ground. My brain was undamaged enough to call my Coumadin nurse, Veronica, before everybody left for the long weekend. Veronica suggested I go to an urgent care clinic to see if the damage included any hairline fractures.
My son Aaron wanted to know if he should cancel our plans to go out to dinner with his friend Clark, who would be arriving soon, but I didn’t want to damage everyone’s evening, so I said “no.”
At the urgent care clinic, they x-rayed my left wrist, right wrist, and my right ankle and found no fractures. Even though I had walked the half-mile back home without pain, my right foot was now so sore that they gave me a walking boot. They said the ankle damage could be a sprain or just internal bleeding because of the Coumadin.
Then, just when I was thinking I had escaped serious damage, a doctor came in all concerned about brain damage and quoted this poem to me:
He bumped his head and went to bed,
And he couldn’t get up in the morning.
That got my brain’s attention, because I always want to get up in the morning. I thought the doctor was mainly concerned about brain damage because I had described hitting the side of my head very slightly in the fall, causing my glasses to fall off. However, she insisted that even if I hadn’t hit my head at all, any fall on Coumadin could cause brain damage and I should get at least one CAT scan, if not two.
I asked what the signs of brain damage would be and she said, “headaches, double vision, nausea, or change of personality.” Telling my son Aaron, his friend Clark, and my husband Michael to be on alert for any brain damage, we went out to dinner as planned and the only cat scan I got was this:
Because my brain is not so damaged that I take foolish risks, I contacted the on-call doctor at my hospital to see what they would suggest and, as I suspected, she was rather surprised about the Urgent Care doctor’s concern about brain damage and supported my decision not to worry about it. Believe me, my brain is damaged enough by worries without adding unnecessary ones at this point.
Do you see any evidence of brain damage in my other images for today?
It seems brain damaged to me that all of today’s National days involve eating dead cows. There seems to be too much brain damage in my country as I write this, and we better use our brains before it’s too late.
Because double vision is one of the signs of brain damage, here’s “Double Vision” by Foreigner.
If you see any evidence of brain damage in this post, please let me know in the comments section, below, and I’ll consider getting a CAT scan.
Thanks to all who help me write these daily posts with my brain and my heart, including YOU!
It’s no chore for me to blog every day and here’s a definition of “chore.”
My husband, Michael (who does almost all the chores around here) and I sometimes discuss what chores we dread. He dreads the chore of taking out the garbage and I dread the chores of being on call at work, doing our taxes, and testing my blood every other week because I take the anticoagulant Coumadin. We both dread the chore of taking either of our cats to the vet.
Last night, I asked this question on Twitter:
I phrased the question that way because a few people have let me know that they find my Twitter questions a chore. I look forward to reading all the answers to that question, which will be no chore at all.
My niece Julie McGrath has said this about chores: “Try changing I HAVE to do this to I GET to do this!” Using Julie’s advice, I’ll say this: I get to check my blood INR today!
I also get to share all these quotes about chores with you, plus other random images.
Today I get to celebrate National Love Your Pet Day, which is no chore at all.
If it’s no chore, please leave a comment below.
Now I get to express my thanks to all who get to do chores and who read my blog, including YOU!
I have a special talent for including links in these blog posts, so please click on the paragraph above for more information about the incredible Shaun White.
Can you find special talents in my images for today?
It takes a special talent to celebrate every day.
This is what I find when I search YouTube for “special talents.”
What’s your special talent?
One of my special talents is expressing gratitude, so thanks to all who help me create these daily blogs, including YOU.
On 2/2/22, I have 22K followers on Twitter and I’m celebrating my 22 + 47th birthday!
My plan for Groundhog Day 2022 is to take the day off from work; spend it with my husband, my son, and our two cats; play our annual game of Sorry; eat flourless chocolate cake with whipped cream; read; take a walk; listen to music; and practice this song on the ukulele:
Two days after Groundhog Day, I’ll be performing that song at a remote Open Mic.
I was able to catch, live, the Groundhog’s prediction for 2022:
Of course, commercials almost ruin that, but the prediction is there (and no surprise).
Can you see evidence of Groundhog Day in my other images for today?
Because of the rare heart condition I was born with, I’ve never been a girl or woman in sports. However, if you can’t play a sport, be a sport, which I guess I am.
How are you going to celebrate Groundhog Day 2022?
I’m going to express my gratitude to all those who have been there for me during Groundhog Day(s), including YOU!
