Big Scare

A busy week.  I worked hard on my new book, editing the 2nd part, inserting poems.  The gardens are producing cucumbers in plenty, zucchini, beets and now beans.  We have more than enough to eat and freeze.  For company tonight I’m making a potato-green beans-tomato salad, cucumbers in yogurt with mint and garlic and a spoon roast.  Gigi is bringing dessert and Tasha is making hors d’oeuvres.

Wednesday, I had pain around where my pacemaker is inserted, redness, a bit of swelling.  I was terrified. I thought my pacemaker had come loose and was no longer functioning.  When I was leaving the hospital, I noticed a lump under the bangdage.  She told me never to prod of poke around there, it was the site of the incision.  So I left it strictly along except for gentle washing once I was allowed to take baths again.  I really had no idea what was there.  I didn’t know what the lump was Wednesday when it started to hurt.  I wasn’t sure what the lump was [it was my pacemaker up there by the incision].  The incision, by the way, is almost invisible now. 

Anyhow, I was scared and called my cardiologist’s office and my own Dr. William Shay.  He fitted me in by staying late Thursday.  I had X-fays and he examined me thoroughly. By today, no pain, no redness no swelling.  He thinks I may have banged it around while I was exercising.  I’ll try to be more careful.  I didn’t know that was the pacemaker there in y shoulder.  When I was told it would be attached to my heart, I thought that meant it was right there at my heart in my chest. 

I’m delighted it turned out to be just a short-term inflammation.  A short-term pain that seems now to have almost entirely abated. It’s still a wee bit tender but nothing to scare me the way I was scared on Wednesday and Thursday. 

We had made arrangements to drive out Thursday to Chester MA, a small town with a summer theater to see a play that Jay [Melenie’s husband] had co-written and was starring in.  We were to meet Melenie for supper, then drive back after the  play and get home around 3 in the morning.  Not ideal, but we had a lot of things to do on Friday.

With my medical scare, we had to cancel. We’ll see the play in the fall in Northampton, MA.  We were disappointed and I’m sure Jay was too.

Cucumbers aplenty so far, herbs of course, zucchini and now beans from the lower garden as well as beets now planted there. We did poorly on garlic this year.  Woody pulled the plants and they’re drying on a wooden table in the gazebo. We’re not sure why the garlic was skimpy this year, I think we need to test the soil or send it away to be tested.  The latter is more likely.

I wrote two poems this week and did regular exercise – until I fucked up my chest.  I’ll be more careful when I resume this weekend. 

Every time Microsoft does an update to my computer, something goes wrong.  But my tech service COMPUTER HELP was able to fix it quickly today.   I couldn’t save anything I wrote yesterday or this morning.  Now I can. I was able to recover the poem I wrote yesterday but lost the recipe I had typed up an saved.  I’d rather lose a recipe than a poem.

I don’t understand why Biden, when he has done so much and is trying to do more to help people, comes out so unpopular. I think it’s the media. They never give him credit for what he’s trying to do.  Ageism. They don’t like him.  He doesn’t create good copy all the time the way Trump does. He is controversial enough.  They always give trump huge publicity.  But then the media reports on so little of what is happening and biases rule.  They barely mention the attempts of the Republicans to gut social Security and Medicare.