After Bucket List

 On a recent work trip to Syracuse, we took a Road Trip up to Fort Onterio, there were 4 of us who had never been in the area.  We were talking about the things we were seeing and doing and all of us thought it was pretty cool to cross off, The Erie Canal, Fort Onterio, Lake Onterio, and Green Lakes State Park from our bucket lists.  But none of us had those things on our bucket list, so we came up with the concept of an After Bucket List.  Unlike the name might imply, this is not after you kick the bucket.  This is after you do something, something you didn't think you were going to do or see, but it came your way and it was cool enough to be on a bucket list. So I started an After Bucket List. It's gonna be fun to grow it. What has been on your after bucket list?

Life Lessons from my Sophomore year of High School

 It's been way too long since, I Blogged, over 2 years, I keep saying I will make a goal to start again, but never seem to do it.  Reflections on something at work brought me back to High School.

At work a long time ago, my previous manager push pulled and dragged me kicking and screaming into what I could call leadership in a part of our station. ( I'm purposefully being vague because I don't like to directly discuss things from work. )  I'm not even sure he was even aware that he was doing this, (well, yes he probably was aware, he hated this particular area) it was a part of our job that was going ok, but just ok. I reluctantly started paying more attention, taking some initiative to make things better. As time went on, we got new leadership, I was at the point where I had decided to deliberately take the reins of this area and my new manager was not only willing to let me charge ahead, but he supported me in trying new ideas and let me succeed and fail with how I wanted to do things. I think, I inherited some stubbornness, and had decided that I was going to make this work and be the best.  Because I had/have great leadership who let me grow, and even more because I have a great team in which we all deliberately support each other, we have made this area of work into a great success. In fact, within our company, in this area, I will call us the best of the best.  I have stats to back that up. 

I was reflecting on this the other day and part of my high school was brought to my mind. Back in the day, everyone who was anyone was in choir at school, well, lots of us were.  As with pretty much any Jr High or High School Choir, the girls far outweigh the boys.  It leads to an unbalanced choir, plus, in our case, not enough seat in the choir room so the choir had to be divided. It was divided into "Concert Choir" and "Girls Choir" You had to try out for Concert Choir, and if you didn't make it, you were in Girls Choir.  Us in the Girls Choir, we all knew we were second string, and it kind of showed.  At First. The main Music Teacher, didn't have the time or desire to put forth the effort to teach Girls Choir, but they brought in Mrs. Morrison to lead us. She took charge of us and changed how we thought about Girls Choir.  She refused to let us be second string.  I remember how she would push us to be the best. She used to tell us "your not Olivia Newton John singing 'Sandra Dee' in a soft breathy voice, you need to sing and project your voice" We didn't get by with skating by.  When the school provided Choir Robes for Concert Choir, but refused to buy us uniforms, she made us want to have a uniform and we all bought black skirts and white shirts, we had an 'In" at Target and knew they were going to be on sale. We looked awesome. It was a team decision to wear a uniform and a team decision as to what that uniform would be. We all had input and it just worked. We knew we were second string as far as others thought, but we weren't second string in our eyes.  This was because of Mrs. Morrison.  She taught us all how to be the best we can. There was a change in us from the first day of Girls Choir to the night of our first concert. 

I realized the other day that the lessons Mrs. Morrisson taught me, have stayed with me.  Looking back, I've used that "we are not second string" a lot in my life.  Take something that works ok and make it the best.  Teachers today have it tough, but teachers back then did too.  I don't know if teachers realize the impact they can make on students every day, and that those students still live with those lessons over 30 years later. If anyone knows where Mrs. Morrison is, please let her know, she made a difference.

Follow up to the Choir saga, Junior Year, I made Concert Choir and hated it.  The instructor wasn't a team player, he constantly talked down others and yelled at us a lot.  When I called him out and asked him to stop insulting other school choirs and talking bad about them, (after class and in private,) he told me I didn't have the right attitude for Concert Choir and if my attitude didn't improve, I wouldn't make Concert Choir next year.  Uhm yeah, I didn't even try for choir and my senior year was the only year of school I had no music in. The life lessons he taught me, still stick with me, I learned from him and putting others down is no way to raise yourself up, it just makes you look petty.  

Concert Choir was full of talented kids, they made great music.  And So was Girls Choir. 

Follow up to my last Blog

I don't Blog nearly as often as I want to, and these last few months have been full of craziness.  Not gonna touch on COVID or Politics.  7 weeks ago we became grandparents.  Little Miley Elizabeth Clemetson joined Laura and Ryan's family and is the sweetest, cutest baby ever born.  Joshua and Hannah got engaged and plan a small family wedding in December with a bigger celebration to follow next summer. Joshua was laid off and he moved back home, (sounds like he will be called back in the fall) my work hours were drastically reduced, John's job went through several changes.  We are recovering from all of this, John's job is getting back to normal, my hours are still reduced but increasing.  Even today, Laura and Ryan are dealing with massive flooding due to heavy rainfalls along the river that goes through their land.

After the episode I blogged about last time, I was sent to an Electrophyisiology Cardiologist. He determined that the rapid heart rate episodes I had been experiencing was caused by an extra electrical path in my heart that was causing an extra heartbeat and my heart wouldn't get out of the rhythm on it's own.

Today I went to the hospital to get it fixed.  The experience was actually quite awful.  I had been told that I would be under a conscious sedation and that I would be sleepy and groggy and not really with it.  I think they forgot that part.  I heard them say they gave me medication, but didn't feel any different after than I did before, so I would say I was wide awake and not groggy at all.  After being hooked up to about 29 wires with patches all over my body they got the rest of me prepped and ready to go.  There was a whole lot of equipment around me that looked like it cost a lot of money. They inserted wires etc into 4 veins, two one each side and one into my femoral artery.  I could feel the wires moving inside my body.  Really strange.  They gave me some kind of drug to produce a rapid heart rate, it worked, I asked what it was and they said 170ish.  I am not sure what all they were doing, but I could feel and hear my heart rate very fast, then it seemed like they were doing things to change that.  I had really strange and awful sensations.  The feeling of chocking was really uncomfortable. Once they had the info they needed, they started the ablation.  The wires that they had already in place were manipulated into place and to fix the problem, they zapped the spot in the heart. If you think about how it might feel to touch your heart to an electric fence, that's what it felt like.  It was painful. They did it twice to two different spots.  Then to check if it worked, they gave me the drug again to try induce a rapid heart beat.  The drug was quite aggressive and made my arms start shaking, soon my whole torso was shaking, like I was having a seizure.  I asked if this was supposed to be happening and the nurse that was with me said yes.  During this time, due to me being on my back for so long, I had a major muscle spasm in my lower back, bad enough to make me cry out, the nurse gave me some kind of pain meds.  That too ended and soon everything was pulled out and I was wheeled back to my room to lay on the bed on my back for 4 more hours to make sure I wouldn't bleed from the femoral artery stuff.  My back spazed out again and few more times, but I made it through.

I'm home now.  I'm still kind of feeling sorry for myself for the experience, it was much worse than I thought it was going to be.  I'm still feeling really stiff and sore, mostly due to being on my back for so long.  I'm super glad I didn't know what was ahead for me.  I am very thankful that they we able to fix the problem, and honestly, compared to what so many others have to go though with medical issues, it really wasn't that bad.

Every day is a gift from God.  I am so thankful for all of you who lifted me up in prayer, God is the ultimate healer.  For all the craziness on the last few months, there is so much more positive than negative. I love you all! 

So I kind of died yesterday, but not really

Yesterday, Friday,  I had the day off, planned to do some really fun things, including a haircut and shampooing the carpets.  Living on the edge, I know. 
Back track to Thursday night, I was having some high blood pressure issues along with a very rapid heart rate.  When I first checked, it was 138 over 106 with a heart rate of 160ish.  Yes, I know that diastolic number is high enough that I should have gone to the ER.  Assuming this was just caused by work stress, that my home machine isn't entirely accurate, and being a tad stubborn that work stress could cause this, I didn't go in.  This has happened several times over the past 8 months or so.  Ignoring the advice of everyone I know, I would stay home and sleep it off.  Go forward again to Friday morning.  I wake up with the same rapid heart rate and the feeling of intense pressure in my head and neck, not pain, just pressure.  It's never lasted this long before.  My home machine would just error out for BP but gave my heart rate at 159, so, at the advise of my Dawns, (you know who you are) I stopped at the clinic on my way to the haircut to have a BP check.  Great news, BP is fine, bad news, they were not happy that my heart rate was still around 160, somewhat jumpy and wouldn't go down, even after they had me try some really strange things.  First she told me to breathe really deep and cough the biggest cough ever, over and over, then blow as hard as I could through a straw.  I guess, doing those things can kick your heart rate back to normal.  Consulting with a whole bunch of people, they decided they wanted me to go to the ER.  This was going on about 14 hours with a heart rate that is way too high and she said my body can't operate like that safely. 
Then she told me what they were going to do.  To break the cycle of this high heart rate, they were going to give me a drug, Adensonine,  or something like that, this would stop my heart beat.  Then, if it goes as expected, the heart starts up at a normal rate.  Seriously they were going to stop my heart, the one thing that keeps me alive.  Do you have any idea of how terrifying that is?  Someone I don't know or trust, was going to stop my heart.  I guess, it's fairly routine, but not for me.  I called John to meet me at the ER, he works in the same building, and yes, they let me drive myself, and yes the ER people said I shouldn't have driven myself. 
After my second EKG of the day, the ER doctor, thought the problem was Afib, ( the two EKGs, while both irregular, seemed to have slightly different results) and then he decided that yes they would give me the heart stopping drug.  Two reasons, one hopefully my heart would start up at the normal rate, and second, he said that while my heart is stopped he would be able to tell if it was Afib or not.  Doc told me he had to wait a few minutes to do this because he wanted the "cardiac" cart in the room.  Ok, I knew well enough what he meant, yes, I want the "crash" cart next to my bedside when you stop my heart.  No need to pretend it's a 'cardiac' cart.  Agreeing to do this was not an easy thing to do.
The actual experience was very odd.  He told me that once they pushed the drug, they would push saline to get it to my heart faster and it would take about 5 seconds.  When it hit, all I could feel was this intense feeling of suffocating, it felt like someone had their hands around my throat and they were choking me.  It went away super fast, maybe 5 to 7 seconds, my heart started again, no need for that "cardiac" cart.   My heart rate started back at a normal rate, around 100, still a tad high for resting,  in my opinion, but back in the normal range.  Whatever he was looking for to determine if this was Afib didn't show up, so it's not that, at least he didn't think so. 
They did a lot of lab work, all of that was normal and good, actually, my labs were much better than they have been in the past, so that's a good thing. He didn't have much of an explanation as to why this happened, he didn't think work stress had much to do with it, although that could have been a trigger.  (working in an airport during a world wide pandemic, no stress there) But he also said when people have a rapid heart rate due to stress, anxiety or a panic attack, it would not last 16 hours.  So I get to see a cardiac electrophysiologist or something like that at some point.  I also get to add a new drug to the list of meds I take daily, which is already showing signs of causing stomach issues like so many other meds do for me.
Anyway, that's my story.  While this issue may be routine for people who work in the ER, nothing is routine when your the patient.  When someone tells you he is going to stop your heart, even for a very brief moment, it's not routine.  Its hard for me to put my safety in the hands of someone else, and since I didn't even know him, it was harder than ever.  I miss my Grand Forks Doctor.
Thanks to Laura for nagging me to go in, for my Dawns who pushed me to go in and for Andrew who reassured me I wasn't going to die and he has heard of this before, that it wasn't some quack medicine thing.  Thank you to John my wonderful amazing husband who stayed with me through my moment of "death".  You are my rock, my anchor and I don't think I could have let them do that if you weren't there with me. Definitely a test of Faith.

It's been way too long

I haven't written anything here for over a year, wow, doesn't seem like it has been that long.
I had a random thought the other night, and I would like to know how you would answer my thought.  If you had two sentences to describe to someone who has been blind their entire life, what it means to see, how would you do it?  Or likewise, someone who has never heard a sound before, what sound is?  I can't answer my own thought.

Saying Hi to an old {young} friend

Saw a friend at Target today.  Might not seem like a big deal, but when you live in a community for over 20 years, you get used to seeing people you know every where you go.  When you go to Target or Texas Roadhouse, you ALWAYS see a friend.  Now I have moved back home, and I'm not lonely,  my best life long friend is here, my family is here, and I have new and old friends, the town just seems somehow empty sometimes.  When I go to Target or Texas Roadhouse, I just see people.  Lots of people, but I don't know ANY of these people. 
So today, when I ran in to David Snyder, it made the whole town seem a bit more like home.  David is one of Joshua's friends, his parents are our friends and his Uncle Mike was my youth pastor in High School.  I got a hug hello and a hug goodbye and ten minutes of chatting with a friend. And I met his girlfriend, a sweet girl.  I was already having a great day, but this made my day even better!  It's also great to see kids you loved as kids grow up into great adults who you still love as adults. 
So next time you see the new person at work, school or Target, say hi, stop and visit, and smile at a stranger. 

clouds from an airplane Delta Flight July 2018 MSP SAN