Friday, February 20, 2009

Life Goes On

No, I have not died…No I have not been playing poker online. I have had an interesting month since the last time I thought it was important to write.

Let’s start with life…

I was sitting in my chair a couple of weeks ago, watching TV and chatting on the girly box when my oldest daughter reminded me that I needed to take her to a friend’s house to take care of their dog. So I get up from my chair and my hand has fallen asleep. I have a slight tingling sensation but why worry about something like that. I probably just leaned on it wrong.

So we head to the house and I wait in the car for her to let the dog out and give it some food when I realize that my hand still feels asleep. Not like it was but kind of dead. This worried me a bit and I hurried home to contact a friend who’s girlfriend is an EMT or something like that anyway. She tells me to call the ER and talk to a nurse to see what they think I should do. By this time I feel the sensation in my forearm and a little in my bicep. So I give the ER a call and they say call my doctor because they will not give any recommendations without seeing me in person.

I call my doctor…I surly dude who doesn’t like the fact that it is almost 11:30 at night when I call. I tell him what is going on and he relieves my feels by saying it doesn’t appear to be a heart attack based on the fact that my chest doesn’t hurt and I’m not feeling sick. Then the hammer drops when he says it sounds like a stroke.

Iwalk into the other room and kindly as my wife if she could give me a ride. I think it would be a stupid move to get behind the wheel of a car if there was any chance of a stroke or heart attack happening so we head to the ER. I new I’d get in fast because they really don’t want dying in their waiting area and we get to the area where they check blood pressure. 178/143 is not a good thing and they sent me into a room and hooked me up to some machines.

They did an EKG and my heart came back strong. No issues there so the next best thing was to do a CAT scan. I was a little worried about this because of the feeling numbness in my hand but it came back OK. So they gave me a little pill and walked out of the room for about an hour. When they came back my blood pressure was back to normal and I checked out.

The lesson I learned from this is to make sure not to skip taking your medication…for a week.

Everything else in life has been solid. Mrs. PE is going back to school, Softball E is getting ready for her first high school season, Speedy E can’t wait for the summer because she has a job lined up and will be able to buy her own computer with the money she earns, and Baseball E is just finishing up with basketball.

On the poker front, I have played a few live tourneys and have final tabled two of them. No big monetary gains but solid play from me overall. Have been doing pretty well in the cash games I’ve played which seems to get handed over to my wife for bills but that’s OK.

I’m glad to be returning to the spring…life always seems to be better when the sun shines longer and the air is warmer.