Thursday, October 09, 2008

Hello, Again

I've been away for a few days. Not physically away, but unable to concentrate on any particular topic. Life has been crazy and scary, stressful at such a level that even a warrior-type as I became pretty bent out of shape. It's nice to be back. Here's a retrospective of the past two weeks.

My IRA, which is my primary source of funds for living, has been hemorrhaging even though I thought it was pretty conservative. Ouch! I've stopped checking the balance.

All my non-profit bookkeeping jobs, both volunteer and semi-paid, had a September 30 closing to deal with. Lots of conputer screens and bank reconciliations!

Early one morning I had a vasovagal attack where my blood pressure and pulse plummeted, I began to sweat like being in a shower, and I got dizzy and tingled all over. It went away after awhile but scared the heck out of me and the Good Witch. Stress, I suppose.

I got sent to a cardiologist by my primary care doc, who didn't like my ekg. My blood pressure was too high, so the cardiologist gave me some minimal meds for that. Then I waited a week to take a stress echo-cardiogram...a week of anticipating the worst. Yesterday the stress ekg showed my heart was perfect and very strong for someone my age. What a relief!

Last Saturday afternoon I responded to an ambulance call and treated a lady who had just given birth in the car. She and the baby were fine, and her hubby - the driver - did a great job under duress!

This morning I answered an ambulance call and found a younger man who had fallen and passed away as a result.

Good Witch is romping on me to slow down. Maybe life can be just a bit too exciting. Time to hit the gym and transfer some of that stress into cardio and muscle-building. I'll worry about the IRA later.

At least McCain/Palin are self-destructing. See, a silver lining in an otherwise dark couple of weeks!

2 comments:

Eusebius said...

That does sound like a rocky week. Take care of yourself!

Ron Davison said...

What if the good witch is right? It sounds to me like don't owe anyone any apologies for pulling back from some of your commitments.

And I share your groaning about the markets. I thought it might get rocky the rest of this summer but imagined that a worst case would be about 10 to 15%. What do I know? I guess the good news is that I have even more time to work on building it back up - given that my retirement has likely slid to the right by years.

Take care of yourself in the midst of taking care of everyone else. What do they say on the airplanes? Put on your own mask first?