Gail's Blog

My BIG MEDICAL MESS was about this:  I had my hip replaced in Georgetown Hospital, and they kept me one night, shifting me to I NOVA Fairfax, Telemetry Unit, which was my home hospital. There they found a pulmonary embolism, started pumping me with blood thinners (Heparin, to be specific) and found that my hemoglobin was dropping like a stone. The trick was to thin my blood without driving me into hemorrhagic shock. In spite of their efforts, I fell into it, anyway. INOVA Fairfax they saved my life again. The first time was almost three years ago when they brought me out of cardiogenic shock , something people survive 50% of the time. Both times I was a guest in CICU, or Cardio Intensive Care. The hip was still in "screaming pain", as my friend, Jeanne calls it from experience, but after they allowed me out of bed (I did get really good at bedpans), and I had physical therapy, which is God's gift to all of us, I was finally transferred to a state-of-the-art intensive re

  I am two years, five months out of my heart transplant. My life is far different than it was before. At first I found things to do, driving to have lunch with friends, going to pick up my sweet grandson from child care once a week for a "date". Going to the gym to see my trainer, working hard. Realizing that getting back in shape would be more of a stretch than it was getting there in the first place!  This was pure bliss. Then there was COVID. I could go outside, but couldn't drive anywhere that ended up inside, like the Safeway, Sherwood Hall Library, or to my daughter's house. The only place I went was to the transplant center, and that was a big outing! During that time, I fainted several times, once outside my house. Standing on the driveway, I thought I was at a delightful garden party, until I hit the pavement. A woman was walking past our house. I could see her alarm, then hesitation about coming over to help. She had on a mask, and I didn't. Even when a

I have to admit that I have been obsessing about my age lately. I've allowed my hair to go grey because I want to dare to be myself, as God has me right now. Yet I am wondering if God cares that I look older than my peers who color. I don't think she does. Also, I am reasonably fit but I still have droopy skin and a crinkly neck. I work with people who are ALL YOUNGER THAN I, a first in my life. I feel alternately hot and over-the-hill depending on how I'm feeling at any given moment. It is unsettling to feel hot when I really am not. Gail as Older Person I simultaneously want to be as fit and up-to-date as possible to offset my age as well as to just be as I am, sinking into comfortable sloth, gluttony, and evil humor as befits my status as a senior citizen. So I'm ambivalent. My close personal friends from high school might remember that I've always been this way. In adolescence I was a hippie (not going into details) but as a performer I was glamorous.