I hate my body.

So.  Easter weekend.  The kids had Good Friday off from school, so Grandma picked them up from school Thursday, brought them and their stuff here, grabbed their overnight bags (packed the evening before), and took off with them.  Friday morning, I picked up groceries from the curbside delivery as usual, then ran in for a bone-in pork shoulder.  Which...I totally mis-timed Saturday, and had to change how I'd planned to cook it.  Instead of using my crock pot, I ended up using my off-brand instant pot (which is still my favorite ever Christmas present).  Took the instant pot and roast up to my mom's for lunch and a visit. 

It turned out tender and tasty...but a little dry.  Damn it.  

Then Sunday was Easter: Odysseus took the kids to church, then brought them home to change out of their nice clothes into something warmer because springtime in Missouri means random cold fronts, and we went over to his mom's for lunch.

I was already feeling about half-dead by Sunday morning, thanks to all the activity Friday morning and Saturday, then compounded by the chilly, wet weather that moved in.  So, yeah, I wound up with an autoimmune flare hitting me; then combined that with a ton of really rich (but tasty) food for lunch, that I didn't salt enough.  So.  ME/CFS flare, plus gallbladder unhappiness, plus not enough sodium to offset all the cold fluids I drank to try to soothe the mildly upset stomach...

...and then, add in a couple of months of more stress and fear over my sister's health...

...and my usual symptoms of low blood sodium refusing to resolve...

I wound up with tachycardia (very fast resting heart rate), plus confusion, plus shortness of breath (probably partially caused by the tachycardia), and a NEW symptom showing up of my heart skipping a beat, then racing faster...which scared me, which boosted my already borderline bp...

Yeah, I tried everything I could think of: I ate two handfuls of sodium/potassium salt, chewed one baby aspirin and swallowed another, took a celery seed extract (which I think may have made things worse, as a diuretic).  Nothing helped.

So I woke Odysseus up and asked him to take me to the ED.  At 12:30.  

They drew blood, and talked to me, put me on a saline drip (first a liter, then another half) and I sent him home at around 3:30.  

Turns out that after two handfuls of sodium/potassium salt, my sodium levels were still below the threshold (129, with 135 being the threshold of normal), potassium levels were barely over, and thyroid levels were really off.  As in: my T4 was a .59 (bottom of "normal" range is .65), and my TSH was 9.75 (TOP of normal range is 6.65).  

The whole "heart skipping a beat" thing?  Turned out to be stress-related premature ventricular contractions.  PVCs.  EKG showed my heart has no damage; cardiac enzymes were "beautiful" according to the ED's attending doc* (the main one).  

They put in an order for a Holter monitor (24 hr heart rate monitor thing that I go in to have applied, go about my business for a day, then go back for them to take off and analyze), and kicked me loose around 5:30.  Got home at a quarter 'til 6, with my heart rate starting to slow, but still tripping over itself.

I crashed, but only slept until around a quarter 'til 10. Could not sleep longer, could not nap...still felt like shit, but less so.  Drank Gatorade, ate salty food, felt better. But still felt awful.  Went to bed early, read, drank more Gatorade, went to sleep.  

Today's not as bad, but I'm still mildly freaked out.  And tired.  And frustrated, because my thyroid's low again, I'm still having weird symptoms (some that it's too high, some that it's too low), can't take Aleve (GERD symptoms), can't take celery seed (still cautious because of blood sodium levels), and my joints are hurting.  

I've had to shift my new-patient appointment for my new doc's office around because the whole Holter monitor thing?  Yeah, the hospital set the appointment for me, and it's at the exact same time.  And I was right--new doc wants to see the results after that test.

I'm still waiting to hear back from my endocrinologist.  Who actually called back for clarification of exactly what I'm taking (because she couldn't quite remember and it hadn't gotten put into my file), was going to call back after the nurse got the clarification, with further instructions...but didn't before the office closed for the day. 

In the meantime, I need to clean out the bottom of the pantry (again) so the electrician (coming first thing Monday) can get at the breaker box.  And get the dog food re-positioned so it can be shoved more out of the way without risking spilling.  

And...yeah.  Gutters.  Gutter guy's been called, but his phone's dead, his wife's got the chargers...and is in the hospital (I feel for her...and pray it's nothing serious).

And we need to make plans for getting the carport rebuilt.  

And I'm still feeling...kind of flattened.  Not as bad, but yeah.  

I really, really hate my body.  But to be fair?  It hated me, first.