A trip to the ER, while on vacation

We got home at 5 this morning, we were going to stay overnight in Santa Cruz, then after dinner with my daughter and the kids, we looked at each other and said to hell with it and drove home. Jan went to bed at 5:30 and I was so wired I hit the rack at shortly after 7. We slept until 12:30. Jan is back in bed. I may join her. If Jan hadn't taken over the wheel after Camp Roberts I would have had us upside down and in flames.

I had a tinge of pain in a tooth on the way up to Westport on Sunday, by Tuesday morning I looked like Chuckie Chipmunk. We went to the emergency room at Mendocino County Med Center, the doc took a look and prescribed penicillin and percocet. After listening to my heart, he hooked me up to an EKG machine, then asked how long I had known about my irregular heart beat. I didn't know I had one! I spent the next 4 and half hours hooked up to a heart monitor, had my heart x-rayed and of course, the irregular beat never showed up again. I have an appointment at Kaiser Permanente tomorrow at 10. I did have a nice nap in the ER.

When we got back to the delightful little house on a cliff overlooking the Pacific, I medicated myself with percocet and penicillin, washed it down with 4 fingers of single batch bourbon. Before I collapsed I roasted a chicken for dinner. Dory built a nice fire in the wood stove and I spent the rest of the evening with a full stomach, lying on the love seat reading surrounded by the ones I love. We had a reservation to go fishing on Wednesday, I changed it to Thursday as I needed to recover from my aching jaw and contemplate my new "condition". Wednesday, Cakes and Dory went to Glass Beach to collect sea glass, on the way they dropped me off at Starbucks in Fort Bragg. I sat there in a drug induced revery, cancelled 100's of e-mails, read the news while drinking a very large, ultra-grande Cafe Americano. I called the office, stumbled over to Albertsons. I had a conversation with a terrible woman my age. I was finally able to shut her up when Dory came into Starbucks to get me and the nosy old bag asked if that was my grandson, I said "No, he's my son and he's got a sister who is 42!" That put a lid on her! By Wednesday night I dropped from Defcon 10 swelling to simply looking like I was chewing a wad of plug tobacco. I medicated early in the evening, went to bed at ten so we could go fishing in the morning. We were on the road to the boat at 5:30 and that's a story for later.