Life Post-Dissection and Heart Attack

Sometimes it's hard to explain to people how my life is different than it was before my spontaneous dissection and heart attack.

Here's a few examples.

Every so often, I like to change things up -- get a new purse, get a new, different color or style of wallet, etc.

Before, I could make my choice solely on finding something I really liked.

Now, my wallet purchases are based primarily on whether my two stent cards, pictured below, will fit. If they don't fit, it doesn't matter how much I love the potential new wallet; it's not coming home with me:



The cards are laminated to preserve the information; thus, they don't fold up neatly to credit-card size.

Another thing. Before, if I was sick and wanted some chicken soup, I could just buy it at the store.

Side note: Cooking is not my forte and it's not something that I enjoy. I realize that other people do, but I've never been particularly good at it, and my repertoire of dishes that I make and that taste acceptable is fairly small.

But now, thanks to having to watch my sodium intake, eating a bowl of chicken soup is no longer a spur-of-the-moment whim--seriously, check out the sodium content on most soups, and remember to double the number because even the microwavable bowls are two servings. And recall that healthy sodium intake is 2,000 mg/day, ideally less. You can get that in a single bowl if you're not careful.

Healthy Choice's Chicken with Wild Rice is a typical offering in the microwave chicken soup category; if you eat the whole bowl, you're getting 900 mg of sodium in one sitting -- because honestly now, who eats just half the bowl? It's not like you can really save it.

This means that if I want soup, I have to make it myself, and let me express my gratitude to whoever it was who invented the slow cooker.

Last night I spent a couple of hours chopping up chicken breast, chopping assorted vegetables, cooking the chicken, then putting everything in the crock pot so that eight hours later, I have a big batch of low-sodium soup, like so:



I'm having a tooth pulled (back upper left molar) tomorrow, you see, and have been warned that I'll probably be eating soft foods for several days after. So instead of going to the store and buying several cans of soup, I spent part of my weekend making it from scratch.

Now maybe these are things that wouldn't upset the apple cart of your life--if you love cooking, and if you're less fickle than I am about your purses and wallets... and don't get me wrong, I don't sit around wringing my hands about my limited accessory choices or the fact that I have to do a lot more advance meal planning--it's just the way my life is now, and it's different--more complicated--than it was before.

Birthday thanks, and adventures in baking

Thanks to everyone who helped celebrate my birthday (belated) yesterday, and thanks to everyone who sent good wishes. The best present of all was getting to see so many friends and spend time with people I hadn't seen in some cases, literally, in years, as well as getting further acquainted with people I've previously just interacted with online.

Miranda deserves mad props for making me not one but TWO cakes. See, now that I'm on a low-sodium diet, I thought it would a smart thing to find replacements for baking soda and baking powder which are made from sodium bicarbonate. There's one baking powder substitute that's made from calcium carbonate, and I'd bought some.

So I gave some to M. for making my cake. Everything on the container and on the company's website said that calcium carbonate works just like baking soda, but it's completely sodium free, and that for best results, you need to just double the amount called for in recipes. So I passed that along to Miranda.

Well. As the kids today say, this calcium carbonate is MADE OF FAIL.

For those who don't know her, Miranda is in fact a first-rate baker. She made mine and Paul's wedding cake 10 years ago and has seriously considered opening her own bakery, so I highly doubt the problem was at her end...

First, she told me that the cake wasn't rising as much as expected.

Then when it came out of the oven, all the rising it did, undid itself.

THEN, it kept... shrinking. Finally, she was left with a tiny brick that she threw away, after tasting it and determining that it even tasted like @ss, too. She told me that at the point when she tossed it, the end product had less than half the volume of the batter.

We were joking that all those people who thought the LHC was going to end the world were correct--they just had the wrong LHC. It's not this one, it's my failed birthday cake, which has turned into a black hole in her garbage can, where no doubt it continues to collapse in on itself.

So she started again and did another version, which looked and tasted terrific--there was not a scrap left at the end of the night. Is that awesome or what? After the first one turned into The Singularity That's Going to Destroy Us All, most people would have said, "Screw it, you're getting a store-bought cake."

Good friends, good food, lots of hanging out and visiting. I couldn't ask for a better celebration. Thanks, everyone.

Though I do wish that whoever anonymously bought me Where the Deep Ones Are from my Amazon wishlist would say something so I could be properly appreciative... :)

A Good Day

It was a good weekend, really, but yesterday was an especially good day, for several reasons. One, good friends Izzy and Dan (minus Christine who was having neck trouble, alas), and the Sanford Pottery Festival. Funnel cake and kettle corn for lunch, woo! Also lots of cool pottery things which I gamely resisted buying--even so, I still came home with a very small bowl, a Christmas tree ornament shaped like a black kitty, a crescent moon magnet, a small outhouse for my dad, and some citrus-scented body powder. Yes, that's restrained, shut up. ;)

Two, for the most part, it was a normal day. I hung out with friends, doing fun things. Then came home, washed my hair, and chilled out in front of the TV, hung out with Paul when he came in from his tennis match. We did dishes. He made pizza. And it was fine. It was normal. It was good.

Other good things from the weekend:

Friday = First of May; see this funny but NOT WORK-SAFE VIDEO:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-77ElyvRxI

Saturday = gaming group. First time playing our rpg since the end of March; it felt great to get back to the characters and dice again.

Three, cleared out the pantry of some stuff I can't really eat anymore and gave it to someone who can, so that was good.

I'm not sure if I'm explaining it well. It was just good to have a normal weekend.

The heartbeat of an elite athlete--without the matching body

So, I went in for my cardiac treadmill stress test this morning. As usual with these things, it took more time to set up and take down all the blinky, beepy, sticky, ouchie monitoring stuff than the actual test itself.

Now that I'm on all sorts of medications, my resting heart rate tends to be incredibly low. Elite-athlete low. As in, 49 bpm. And my blood pressure, not high to begin with, is likewise amazingly low, like 90/58. After getting really winded on the treadmill, my heart rate was all the way up to 94, and my blood pressure had hit 108/70.

Today was also the first of three one-hour educational classes that I need to take before my cardiac rehab exercise program begins in earnest next month. Today's was about making changes, and not to my surprise at all, the first Powerpoint slide was Prochaska's Stages of Change (though it didn't mention Prochaska by name). I first learned about these when I was working at MicroMass in Cary, at the brief tech writing job in late 1999-early 2000.

Over the weekend, my medical alert ID bracelet came. I'm wearing it now, but I'm not used to it yet. When I opened the package, my first thought was "it's a little small." Other thoughts: "It's kind of like a pet's rabies tag." "Didn't think I'd be one of those people with one of these." I figure I don't need to have it on all the time. Don't need it when Paul's around, for example. Do need it if I'm by myself, or at work, or out with friends and Paul's not there.

When I was a teenager, I used to have one of those bracelets with my name engraved on a plate. This is like that, only... not.

Also found an online store selling lots of low- and no-sodium products, the Heart Healthy Market. Additionally, I'm trying out a low-sodium crock-pot sloppy joe recipe--I'm using ground turkey breast to make it even more healthy; it's simmering away even as I type and will be ready for supper tonight.

ETA: Two thumbs up on the low-sodium sloppy joe recipe! Tastes great, and has around 105 mg of sodium/serving, compared to ... holy shit, 800 mg in my previous favorite pre-made sloppy joe mix, Hunt's Bold Manwich Sloppy Joe sauce. 800 mg! WTF???