What a week!!

Hello everyone...  Sorry I have been missing in action so long but unfortunately there have been not one, but two medical emergencies in my family in the past week!  

First, last Thursday my boyfriend woke up at 6:45 am with severe pressure and burning in his chest, arms and neck.  He suffered for over half an hour before he woke me up and I rushed him to the hospital (thank goodness he was not stubborn like most men)!  After several hours at the hospital they discharged him, claiming to have found nothing, only to call us back after we were half way home on the highway to say that blood work had come back late and it was very urgent that he come straight back to be admitted and monitored over night.  Umm, can we say they almost had a major lawsuit on their hands!?  Anyway, at that point we were scared, especially because they would not say what they had found in his blood work over the phone.  When we got back to the hospital we were told he had super high levels of the heart enzyme Troponin which acts as a diagnostic marker for damage in the heart  (particularly a heart attack) and various heart disorders.  Still, they were baffled by this finding because they say he is way too young to have a heart attack - but I don't believe that "You're too young for..." bit for anything!  Well, they kept him over the weekend and on Monday they did a cardiac cathertization exam on him and HALLELUJAH!  Doc says he has a completely normal heart for a 30 year old and no plaque buildup/blockage to be found in any of his arteries.  *Phew*!  Still, the doctors are baffled by the high troponin levels and say he either had a spasm in one of his arteries or inflammation of the heart.  Weird.  Suffice it to say this is a big wake up call for him and both our families!  We won't waste any time changing our eating and exercise habits to ensure this never becomes an issue again!  I am so relieved, I missed him and worried about him so much it's scary!

Second, my great aunt and godmother Francie underwent major surgery to remove a benign tumor pressing on her optical nerve and making her go blind, unfortunately in the days following the surgery she had two small strokes which may or may not have been caused by a buildup of fluid (thus pressure) at the sight of the surgery suture.  We noticed that her speech was funny, she did not make any sense when she spoke so we rushed her to the hospital and she has been there since Saturday night.  Thankfully doctors were able to flush the fluid buildup, thus relieving the pressure and restoring her speech.  Fortunately it seems the effect on her speech was only temporary due to the fact that both strokes were very small.   She is still in the Neurology Intensive Care Unit but may be released today or tomorrow.  She is very dear to all of our hearts and has so much life left to live, I just knew things had to workout for the best.

Thankfully, everyone is okay, thank goodness...  After my father passed away on a family vacation a few years ago from a massive heart attack I don't think I could handle losing another loved one right now.  I know that my father is watching out for all of us, and to him I say DADDY, THANK YOU, I LOVE YOU AND I MISS YOU DEARLY!

With that said, I really want to get back into the blogging swing of things this week, as it is I have an embarrassing amount of "Draft" posts just piling up, so I gotta hop to it!

How have you all been?  Hope all is well, bear with me as I churn out some posts....

(All images in this post are my own personal photographs)