Posts Tagged With: CCTGA

Day 4791: Interesting

It’s interesting how helpful these daily blog posts are for me (no matter how interesting they are for others).

It’s interesting that this blogging site thinks I’ve posted 666 days in a row …

… when it’s actually been 4,791 days in a row.

Yesterday, I went to see yet another interesting expert about the interesting clicking noises I hear in my head when I speak or sing. This doctor and his interested entourage put an interesting little microphone and camera though my nostril so they could observe what interesting things my upper palate did when I speak. When the doctor, who had an interesting way of dealing with patients, asked me to keep talking, I recited the words to my original song “Everybody’s Somebody’s Asshole.”

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It’s interesting that — because of the inserted microphone — somebody else could hear the noises for the first time since they appeared 30 months ago (but who’s counting?).

It’s interesting how reassuring that was.

When the interesting doctor told me that my situation was atypical and unusual, I took a breath and said, “Since I’ve been born, I’ve been dealing with the rarest congenital heart condition and other atypical and unusual issues, and I’m kind of sick of being …”

“Interesting?” said the doctor.

It’s interesting that there continues to be no obvious way forward to treat these noises, but we’re going to try a Botox injection next month. It’ll be interesting to see what happens.

What’s interesting about my images for today?

©️ Ann Koplow, 2026

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I look forward to your interesting comments, below.

Thanks to all my interesting readers, including YOU!

Categories: original song, personal growth, photojournalism | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Day 4513: TMI, TLI, and JRI

I don’t know if this is TMI (Too Much Information), but yesterday I might have shared TLI (Too Little Information) here when I wrote that I had recently dealt with two worst case scenarios. By not describing the worst case scenarios, my TLI caused some people to be concerned and worried.

I don’t know about you, but I sometimes don’t know what’s TMI and what’s TLI. In other words, I wonder whether I’m sharing JRI (Just Right Information).

Is it TMI, TLI, or JRI for me to link to a post I wrote about this years ago (on my 8th day of blogging!), referring to the Goldilocks story?

Anyway, I wonder if I’m now going to share TMI to deal with the TLI I shared yesterday.

Because I was born with a very rare heart condition, I needed to get a mechanical heart valve in 2016, which requires me to be on Warfarin for the rest of my life to reduce the coagulation of my blood. If my blood has Too Much Coagulation, my heart valve will clog, which means I’d need the dreaded open heart surgery again to get a new heart valve. If my blood has Too Little Coagulation, that can cause internal bruising and bleeding.

So, I need to maintain Just Right Coagulation and, because I had a mini-stroke (also called a TIA!) when I had TMC (Too Much Coagulation) a few years ago, the range of Just Right Coagulation is very thin.

TMI? TLI? JRI? Wait, there’s more!

I have to use this device …

… to measure the coagulation time of my blood (also called INR), which has a delay before it displays the magic number. During the delay, my mind always goes to the worst case scenario — the number is too low, which means I need to inject myself with this …

… twice a day until my INR has good enough coagulation.

On Friday, my INR was 2.5, the lowest it’s been since I had my TIA when I was on vacation in Georgia, where I was hospitalized until my blood had Just Right Coagulation. So I’ve been injecting myself this weekend and I’m now hoping for an INR that has good enough coagulation (2.7 or above), which I’ll check after I finish this blog. If it’s still too low, I’ll just keep injecting myself and I’ll take more Warfarin tonight.

TMI, TLI, JRI?

And what about the second worst case scenario I mentioned in yesterday’s TLI blog post? I’m not going to describe that because it’s too long of a story, but I will avoid TLI by letting you know that it has nothing to do with my health or the health of anybody else.

Is there TMI, TLI, or JRI in my other images for today?

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I wonder if I’ll find Too Much Information, Too Little Information, or Just Right Information when I search for “TMI, TLI, and JRI” on YouTube.

Here’s the first thing that showed up:

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Feel free to share whatever information you choose, below, without worrying if it’s TMI, TLI, or JRI.

Thanks to all who are here for this this TMI, TLI, and JRI post, including YOU!

Categories: personal growth, photojournalism | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Day 4485: Other people’s anger

I’ve spent too much of my life worrying about other people’s anger.

When I was a child and in the hospital dealing with heart problems, other people’s anger seemed very dangerous, so I practiced being a perfect and lovable patient.

Old habits die hard, but at this point in my life I know I can survive other people’s anger and that I can’t please everybody.

I even wrote a song called “Other People’s Anger.”

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I don’t know whether “Other People’s Anger” or my other original songs are good enough to share on Spotify yet. I’ll be talking to my show biz coach, Jeff Leisawitz — who helped me overcome writer’s block and write songs including “Other People’s Anger” — this week about that.

Yesterday I met my beloved ex-sister-in-law Deborah at the fabulous Deluxe Town Diner in Watertown, and we discussed our own anger about how narcissistic leaders’ anger and greed are wreaking destruction world wide. I told her that I’m working on a sign which I’ll bring to join in with other people’s anger at protests next Saturday.

Do you see other people’s anger in my other images for today? If you do, do you care? I don’t!

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Thanks to all who are here for this other-people’s-anger post, including YOU!

Categories: life in the USA, original song, personal growth, photojournalism | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Day 4074: Once upon a time

Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Ann who was born with a very unusual heart. While her life was sometimes scary, she met many wonderful people who helped her grow up to appreciate the richness and beauty of every moment.

One of my favorite people in the world, Sharon, is at the Group Therapy conference!
The presenter for yesterday’s session showed a clip from one of my favorite movies, Lars and the Real Girl!
Kevin Howard, who is such a fabulous piano player and who also loves McCoy Tyner, George Duke, and Lyle Mays, said he might show up at my concert in June!

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Once upon a time, Ann searched and found this on YouTube.

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Thanks to all who have helped me once upon a time and now, including YOU!

Categories: personal growth, photojournalism | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 14 Comments

Day 3868: Nice

Many nice things happened to me yesterday. First, my nice Primary Care Doctor did some nice detective work early yesterday morning and discovered that the alarmingly and unprecedentedly high number on Wednesday’s heart-failure blood test was probably a false alarm.

I won’t go into the niceties of why that was, but my nice doctors still thought it would be nice for me to get an echocardiogram ASAP to ensure that my nice but very unusual heart was doing a nice enough job.

So I took a nice trip to the hospital yesterday afternoon and met a nice echocardiogram technologist who despite his many years of experience had never encountered a nice heart like mine before. He said it would have been nice if they had scheduled me with somebody who had experience with congenitally corrected transposition (the rarest of all heart defects). I wasn’t just being nice when I told him that I believed he would do a nice enough echocardiogram to capture all the necessary information my nice doctors wanted to see.

We had a nice time as I told him about my cardiac history and he was nice enough to tell me what he was going to do before he did it. It would have been nice if I had remembered to take a photo of this very nice echo technologist so I could share that with all my nice readers.

What was really nice was that — rather than being tight-lipped about what he was seeing (my usual experience with medical technologists) — he told me that as far as he could tell, my nice and very strange-looking heart was doing a nice job. He said that a nice doctor would take a look at the images after I left and I think it’s a nice sign that I didn’t get a call last night from the hospital.

It was nice that, with all this nice news and non-news, I could really enjoy the arrival of my nice son back from his nice trip to Europe. I guess I was being nice by not taking a picture of him and my husband Michael last night because even though they can be nice about it, they really don’t like having their pictures taken. However, I warned them that I will soon need a nice picture of the three of us for the class report for my upcoming 50th college reunion, which I’m sure will be nice.

It would probably be nice if I stopped writing and shared my nice images from yesterday right now.

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It’s nice that I don’t have to work like a dog today and that I’m about to play outside with my nice son, who is staying here for a couple of days.

Here’s a nice video of our nice cat Joan doing a nice job cleaning herself.

I find looking at cats nice and relaxing.

Thanks to all of my nice readers, including YOU.

Categories: personal growth, photojournalism | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 17 Comments

Day 3866: What does BNP stand for?

Blogging Never Prevents me from Being Nicely Productive in other areas of my life. As a matter of fact, Blogging Naturally Provides what this Blogger Needs: a Personal Balance of Native Perception and Being Nominally Pertinent and Being Neatly Present here, every day.

All those BNPs in that Barely Nonsensical Paragraph are By their Nature Pleasanter than the BNP test I got at my cardiology appointment yesterday, which is Briefly Notated in this Paragraph:

The Basic Number Presenting itself in a BNP test for a Basically Normal Person is less than 100; my BNP yesterday was 1308, which I found out after I left my cardiology appointment yesterday.

Because No Person wants a BNP number that high, I immediately contacted my cardiologist, Deeb Salem, asking if I should be alarmed. He did not recommend alarm (he never does), but he suggested that I get an echocardiogram ASAP. I asked him if this high number meant that I was in heart failure or that my ventricle was going downhill (always a concern for people with my very unusual heart) and he responded: “the echo should tell us.”

Because Nervous People might assume that a BNP number that high might Be a Nasty Prognosis, I should tell you that the BNP for a Basically Normal Person with my heart condition can be high. However, because I’ve never had a BNP higher than 600, even when I was in heart failure in 2016, you can understand why I might Be Nervous, People.

Balanced News Provides some relief, however: there is nothing alarming or abnormal about my appearance, so I choose to Be Naturally Positive about the future. Apparently, for me, an echocardiogram outweighs a BNP test in the ‘Bility to Nicely Portend the future.

But ‘Nough Predictions. Bring on the Nice Pictures!

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BNP also stands for Bitches Need Pizza.

Here’s what I find on YouTube when I search for “what does BNP stand for.”

Better Numbers. Phew!

What are your thoughts and feeling about this Barely Notable Post about BNP?

Thanks to all the Beautifully Natural People who read this daily blog, including YOU.

Categories: personal growth, photojournalism | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

Day 3838: Weird conditons

I have many weird conditions, including

  • Noticing numerical patterns,
  • Congenitally Corrected Transposition of the Great Arteries, which is the weirdest/rarest from-birth heart defect,
  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder because of many hospitalizations when I was young,
  • Erroneously assuming that people are paying as much attention to me as my parents had to when I was a child,
  • Caring too much about other people’s feelings,
  • Impatience with injustice, and
  • Sharing my life with many people on social media, including here.

Do you see any weird conditions in my images for today?

I have this weird condition of needing to listen to great jazz, so here is 8 time Grammy winner and bassist extraordinaire Christian McBride.

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Thanks to all who share this weird condition known as the human condition, including YOU.

Categories: personal growth, photojournalism | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments

Day 3729: It all worked out

It all worked out when I married my second husband, Michael, who responds “It all worked out” whenever I tell him about my latest ups-and-downs adventure.

Here and now, I’m trying to work out the different way I’m saying “it all worked out” to myself these days, so I can communicate that to you.

For the first time in my life, I really believe it all worked out because

  • against all odds, I made it to the age of 70,
  • my son has what he needs to lead a good life,
  • I’ve made a positive difference in this world with my therapy groups (and maybe other things too),
  • I love and am loved,
  • I know that the daily hysteria of the news media is fueled by marketing strategies,
  • I don’t have to work so hard any more, and
  • no matter what comes up in the future— catastrophe, triumph, or anything in between (and most of them are in between) — I know it all worked out.

It all worked out when I gathered these images for you today.

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Even on Awkward Moments Day, it all worked out.

I know it’ll all work out when I search for “it all worked out” on YouTube.

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Thanks to all who help me know it all worked out, including YOU!

Categories: personal growth, photojournalism | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments

Day 3726: Unknown

As I’m writing this at 4:30 AM, it’s unknown to me whether I’ve written another blog post with the title “Unknown,” although I suspect I have.

Many people have a fear of the unknown. My fear of the unknown is unknown to me, perhaps because I have spent so much of my life inhabiting the unknown.

If the meaning of that previous sentence is unknown to you, my extremely rare congenital heart condition has made any predictions about my life span unknown. Therefore, I seem to feel very comfortable living in the unknown.

On the other hand, it is unknown to me why I can get so anxious about mundane issues like doing my taxes or choosing tiles for a shower remodel while fearlessly facing the realities of serious, life-long health issues. It’s also unknown to me why I waste so much time wondering who in the universe might be mad at me or wish me ill, forgetting that those people can’t really hurt me.

It is not unknown to me that I am not alone in being puzzled by the unknown operations of one’s own mind.

Let’s see what some known people have said about the unknown.

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Do you see the unknown in any of my other images for today?

The Ides of March are known to me but it is unknown to me why those of us who are not Caesar should beware them.

If the recently deceased jazz legend Wayne Shorter (quoted above) is unknown to you, allow me to introduce you to one of his beautiful compositions.

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I hope my gratitude is not unknown to you, dear reader.

Categories: personal growth, photojournalism | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments

Day 3700: Who Shall I Be Day

According to the National Day Calendar, today is Who Shall I Be Day!

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Who shall I be on Who Shall I Be Day? Shall I be

  • a blogger,
  • a group therapist,
  • a mother,
  • a wife,
  • a friend,
  • a person with a rare heart condition,
  • someone who has been attempting to remodel a water-damaged bathroom for almost two years,
  • a person who has been diagnosed with PTSD,
  • a lover of cats,
  • a funny person,
  • a scared person,
  • a brave person,
  • an empath,
  • a Democrat,
  • someone who grew up in an Orthodox Jewish household,
  • a songwriter,
  • someone with 33K followers on Twitter,
  • somebody who aches about injustices,
  • a person who likes to ask lots of questions,
  • a neighbor,
  • an observer,
  • a 70-year-old woman in an ageist and sexist culture,
  • a playful person,
  • a teacher,
  • a learner,
  • a catastrophizer,
  • an optimist,
  • a person who wakes up in the middle of the night trying to solve problems big and small,
  • someone who recognizes that we all have to put problems aside sometimes,
  • a list-maker,
  • somebody who struggles to trust herself and others,
  • someone who tries not to take herself too seriously in the midst of serious times, and/or
  • a person who captures and shares images here every day?

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Here’s what I find when I search for “who shall I be day” on YouTube:

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Who shall you be on Who Shall I Be Day?

Every day, I shall be someone who is grateful for YOU.

Categories: personal growth, photojournalism | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

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