"What happens is not as important as how you react to what happens." - Ellen Glasgow

OK, maybe not the most appropriate pic given the last three days, but I still like it.

It's 10:45 and we're waiting for discharge orders. The dr. finally came in about 10:00 and gave us his best take on Pam's situation, which is basically a shoulder shrug. After further review (?) he says all her tests look very good and she did NOT have a heart attack like he said yesterday. He's now calling it Syndrome X ("Look it up") (I did), a condition that occurs primarily in women and involves a constriction of one of the millions of very tiny - smaller than a human hair - blood vessels around the heart.
Syndrome X, aka microvascular angina

Syndrome X mimics the symptoms of a heart attack in every way but does not pose any risk to life and does not result in any damage to the heart. It's likely to happen again and is just as likely to happen when sitting as when exercising.  Pam should continue her program of diet and exercise and report any recurrence.

Syndrome X can be confirmed with a test that costs $20,000 so we agreed to skip that one.
Just about the only way to tell the difference between a legit heart attack and Syndrome X is that the symptoms of the latter don't improve with nitroglycerin.

This seems to be what's known as a differential diagnosis. That's medical speak for "we've ruled out everything else we can think of so we're going to call it this."
A diagnosis of Syndrome X raises an interesting question: If/when this happens again how do we know if it's a recurrence or a legit heart attack? Unless you happen to have a bottle of nitro pills in the spice cupboard....

Right now the bottom line is that as soon as the nurse gets discharge orders and we're cut loose we're going HOME to do laundry (Pam), clean coop and weaning shed (Craig), pack, and be ready for our flight to Phoenix tomorrow!!!!!

The word recurrence is obviously related to the word occur. Why aren't they spelled similarly? Why isn't it reoccurence?

It's now 3:30 p.m. Pam is in town doing the laundry and will stop to pick up some prescriptions on the way home. While she's gone I've watered the berries, cleaned the coop and the weaning shed, gave Frenchie her CD-T vaccination, and put away all the tools I was using on the trailer build. Once the temp starts to drop a bit (it's mid-80s now) I'll go water the veggie garden so Pam can start packing.

On the way home from the hospital we talked about the events of the last three days and her reactions to them. Having spent almost 20 years working in hospitals she had thoughts about this hospital and the people she encountered during her stay there. She had good nurses, including MeMe who I may write about in a future post. The food was mostly blech. And they were seriously understaffed; The two nurses on her cardiac unit had six patients each.

"What about you? What's your personal reaction to the medical event and how it played out?"

She's even more motivated to keep up with her diet and exercise regimen. When we were told it was a heart attack she was a little afraid to go back to exercise lest that trigger another one. But now we know it was microvascular angina, not damaging, and not more or less likely to happen again with exercise that fear is gone.

She felt bad for me.
"Why?"
Because she could see I'm not ready for her to be gone.
"You mean 'gone' as in dead?"
Yes.
"Well duh! Of course I'm not. But when would I be??"
I suggested that if she ever got the sense I am ready for her to be gone she'd better pay close attention to what's on her plate and in her Rx bottles.

I'm sure we'll talk more about the last three days in the near future. It was a pretty big deal in our otherwise pretty stable lives.

If a Senator says they clearly will never vote to confirm a nominee what is the purpose of their questions in the hearing room? Hmmm.