I remember looking at my grams arms, how easily they bruised. Just a flick to her skin raised that familiar blood spot just under her skin. It always made me sad. "Old skin" she would tell me.
Now it's my skin.
After 2 days (now 4) of my heart in my chest feeling like it was skipping beats or beating too much I became tired. I couldn't catch a breath sitting still and it made me feel sick to my stomach so off we went to the hospital. "We." Hub and myself. These last few years since returning to New England I've had a phobia of myself, my mortality and the "D" subject.
Phobia doesn't really describe it. Obsession. My fear of dying, death, old age smacked me flat across the face in the hospital when the doctor said to me "but you ARE older." Tests, EKG's, IV's, X-rays and I now have arms full of my grandmother's (RIP) "old skin" marks where I was poked and prodded. I disgust myself. I'm getting old, or am I old? Either way it sucks.
Well I still feel like shit and to make matters worse now it seems my upcoming 50th birthday has invoked a whole plethora of nightmares when I am able to fall asleep. I'm terrified while awake and afraid to sleep. I see a cardio' doctor Monday.
Sitting here it feels like my heart will beat, double beat right out of my chest and I was sent home with no answers except for the EKG printout showing my heart beating irregular every 20 or so beats. My husband called it "double beating" watching it on the monitor. When the ER doctor asked me about stress in my life my mind SCREAMED...
1) "Stress?!, let me tell you about stress! I have a 26 year old sick son at home who won't get off his ass to help himself, he sleeps in our living room because I offered it and has barely left the room in over a year so my husband and I live in our bedroom with a dog and parrot using our attached screen porch as a make shift living room.
2) My small 3 room apartment is a total mess because unless I clean it daily, cook, do all the dishes along with hand washing linens and laundry daily in my bathtub and drying it hanging everywhere plus cooking the meals nothing gets done.
3) My husband and I have planned a decade to return to England where he "must" work 5 more years in order to receive a state pension at age 65 and also not lose his three private ones. This year is the LAST year he can return or we lose all of it! How can we leave with my sick son camped in my home with nowhere to go and if he has to move he will lose his state disability assistance and his very life from his sick liver?
Now my own body is giving out, I feel cheated, angry. I have so many places "I" want to see and do. I have spent 99% of my living to present caring for those I love and now feel guilty because I have 10-15 mobile years left in me and I want to toss all of this aside and run across the Atlantic, my lifelong dream and live the rest of my life near my grand babies while I can enjoy them and myself!
Husband and I have never even met them. Husband hasn't even been back to England in a decade. HIS parents are now in their 70's and he and I both want to be with them before their funerals.
I looked at the ER doctor and smiled when he asked about stress, because all of the above is useless dribble I need to sort out that doesn't concern anyone.
It seems my body is giving up my secrets, Traitor!
