I have occasional attacks of lightheadedness; mostly when they've hit, I've just gotten up from my desk at work and am reaching up to change one of the newsroom TVs. Usually it goes away after a minute or so. Tonight it stayed for hours, and that scared me enough into an ER visit.

I have been in an ER (as visitor or patient) perhaps half a dozen times in my life and this is the first time I've seen the waiting room empty. I didn't even have time to fill out the form before they called me into triage. In the bays there was only one other patient besides me, an elderly Hispanic from the sound of it.

I wound up there about three hours; all tests back OK. They shared the suspicion of lolleeroberts, whom I had been chatting with online when I decided to go, that dehydration might be the problem. But they want me to stay home from work for a few days and check with my GP, and they gave me Valium and Alavert to take if I get dizzy again.

Body: Good morning!

...Did you know that yesterday, you --

Me: YES, I KNOW.

Went to the doctor yesterday; he couldn't find anything wrong with me and even the blip on the EKG vanished, but I was still having some shortness of breath. The current theory is anxiety, so I now have a prescription for low-dosage Celexa (actually the generic version thereof). Having taken it a couple of days now, I remember why I took it at night when I was on it for depression some years back -- a couple of hours after I take it, it's naptime. So tomorrow instead of taking it in the morning I'll take it in the evening after I come home. The shortness of breath is still there, but not as much as previously. Thanks to everyone who wished me well...

We broke our string of 100-degree days; Thursday only got up to 99, and Saturday only to 98. Friday, though, got up to 101, and today it was 100. So we're 10 for the last 12 on 100-degree days (and the weekend was when it was supposed to cool off to the low 90s).

Dinsdale is looking up at me and meowing, probably for attention. He's doing pretty well, as near as I can tell, though he's due back at the vet's for a checkup sometime this week.

I have a showstopper -- one verse and chorus -- I'm preparing for Conestoga next weekend. I've been dithering about whether to post it or leave it entirely a surprise, but there's only a couple of people I can think of offhand who'll be there who read my journal, so I'll probably post it in a bit. I certainly hope the drive to and from Tulsa is cooler than the drive to/from OKC was last weekend -- OKC has been having even worse heat than Waco (isn't it supposed to get cooler as you go farther north?).

Shortness of breath all day -- not much, but constant. Finally I took off work and went to the doctor. By now it was 6 p.m. -- I work evenings, remember -- and that meant the after-hours clinic because I didn't want to take up ER time with what might be another panic attack.

But that doctor found something odd on the EKG, and said get thee to an emergency room. They ran through everything and reproduced the EKG blip, but everything else was normal. So I'm home now, and eating (I hadn't intended to skip a meal...), and will need to get a doctor's appointment tomorrow.

Ack.

Woke up with a temperature of 96.9. Not quite sure what this means.

Went to work yesterday and will go today unless something drastic happens in the next hour, but still feeling puny enough that the OVFF trip that was to start tomorrow is probably off. Oh, well...

Her sodium's still a little below par, but only a little. It was apparently the change in diet after her surgery combined with the Lotrel side effects that triggered things. She's off the Lotrel now; I haven't heard what they've replaced it with, if they've replaced it with anything.

Thank you all for the GoodThoughts...

Mom checked out 100% on the heart test, so now they think it's her blood pressure drug -- Lotrel -- that caused her sodium levels to drop, and they've put her on another one. She's out of ICU and Pat suspects they may send her home tomorrow.

Mom is doing better. She has more color to her now and is alert. She didn't have a heart attack, but something did happen, so they're giving her a nuclear stress test tomorrow, drug-induced, to see whether the heart thing was cause or effect (I'd lean toward the latter). Today is for getting the electrolytes back into balance.

Pat, it turns out, has been provisionally diagnosed with corneal dystrophy, also called Fuch's endothelial dystrophy. The endothelial cells at the back of the cornea deteriorate, causing the cornea as a whole to swell and blister. No known cure other than corneal transplant, though there are some treatments.

Oh, by the way: filkferengi, I got the Beethoven CDs. Thanks!

My sister Pat has something wrong with her eyes. Mom couldn't remember the name of it, but it has something to do with corneal blisters (?), is supposed to become quite painful and the doctor said there's no cure (possibly he said there's no cure short of corneal transplant). Mom told me this when I called her on Monday.

Tonight Mom's in ICU. She'd been shivering much of the day and her body temperature had dropped. Pat finally talked her into going to the ER (the family practitioner had been booked up) and as they got near the ER Mom started having chest pains.

Nitroglycerin made the chest pain go away, but her sodium levels turned out to be very low. So she's in ICU now while they figure out what's going on with her.

We could all use some GoodThoughts right at the moment...