I Heart Camping

Boring medical stuff: I've been getting lightheaded, dizzy, and tired in the afternoons, and the doctor told me to call her if it got worse. Thursday, it did. I exercised, did my phone interviews, then leapt out of my chair to stretch...only to feel all my muscles cut out and the world to go black. I came too sort of slumped back in my chair - turns out Nick was walking toward me, saw me starting to crumble and caught me before I hit the floor.

I'm really sick of feeling dizzy at odd moments, but this was too much! I called my doctor, and it took a couple of hours to get through. In the meantime, Wini had a doctor's appointment, so I asked the nurses there to take my vitals. My bp was 120/70 and everything looked normal - no funny heartbeat, no anemic symptoms, nothing. I just felt dizzy!

My doctor wanted me to come in for an EKG, and gave me the choice of going in on Friday with a different doctor or waiting until Monday, when she would be back. I don't feel anything heart-related, so I decided to wait until Monday because we had a camping trip to Big Basin scheduled.

So...I went camping. We had a fabulous time! Saturday, we hiked about 4 1/2 miles and went after 3 geocaches on the trail. We ended up taking a wrong turn, ended up on the wrong side of one mountain, and had to take a fire road up to the top and come around on a high ridge to get back to our original geocache destination. It added two miles to the trip, but we really wanted that geocache! The connecting ridge was a very narrow trail right on the side of a very steep slope. All the roots and rocks in the trail made it very bumpy, and it occurred to me that this would be the worst place to have a dizzy spell, except for maybe being behind the wheel. But my head stayed clear the entire time. It was a little nervewracking with Wini along, though! Nick held her hand and kept her on the inside of the trail, and there were parts where we had to hand her down. Definitely it was not the trail we would have chosen if we'd known!

Here we are at the top of the pass:



And here we are with geocache in hand. Yes!



It was a wonderful weekend, and the perfect Mother's Day. Sunday I woke up to find that Wini and Nick had hung a project they had made for me from the roof of tent so that I saw it first thing. We made pancakes with bananas, turkey bacon and coffee. What a relaxing weekend, and I really didn't want to go home.

Monday, I went in for the EKG, and everything showed completely normal. She did some tests on my inner ear, and took my blood pressure in various positions. It does drop about 20 points from when I'm seated when I stand up. Since I'm a diabetic, my doctor asked me to see a cardiologist to rule out the possibility of a problem that she can't detect with a simple EKG, so next Monday I go in for an echocardiogram, which apparently is some sort of ultrasound procedure.

I really don't think my heart is the culprit in this case. It doesn't seem to hit when I'm exercising or putting strain on my heart, it just seems to hit in the afternoon regardless of what I'm doing. I don't mind going in for extra testing, though - as long as my insurance pays for it. If there is some sort of heart problem, I'd rather know about it and try to work on it than be surprised when it's too late.

More pics! These are from Wini's birthday party. The red boat lives at grandma & grandpa Kibre's.












Can you believe this was a month ago?