Yesterday was so bad it turned scary. I still hadn’t slept well and still didn’t get a good sleep score. I also noticed that my HR only dropped to 77 instead of the usual 68-73. On top of that, my heart was pounding and racing all night long and I felt like I was on fire. I knew it couldn’t be connected to my medication because there was no way my TSH could be low enough. This left the possibility of hormonal imbalances or A-fib as my docs suggested. They offered beta blockers to slow my heart which I would have to take daily but the problem with those is that they leave me freezing cold and very sluggish. Tom and I agree that I don’t need to take anything else but try to remember that I do have the CBD gummies which I’d forgotten about and the hydroxyzine. I don’t know if that would help with the feeling really hot or slow my HR, but I should have given one of them a try.

My blood pressure was through the roof and when I saw the numbers it threw me right into a panic attack and I got Tom up. He felt bad for going to bed so early and said he shouldn’t have left me alone while on nights which is when I tend to have more problems. I assured him it wasn’t his fault since I was fine the last time I was on nights.

I got up at 4:45 and found a message from him saying he went to bed an hour earlier and will be up late tonight. That’s the beauty of being retired! He was reassuring me not to feel bad because he could sleep all day as I did.

My HRV is also low. I told the docs about this and about the shimmering I saw in my vision the other night so they were up to date on everything. I would wear the damn heart monitor if I knew it was covered under our insurance and go to a cardiologist to find out what’s what once and for all. But right now I’m pretty overwhelmed with so many damn referrals. I just want to get the GI out of the way and find out what they’re gonna do about that before I take on anything else. Besides, we did read that gallbladder issues can cause anxiety. So maybe I was just anxious. I’m hoping it was a combination of that and hormonal fluctuations. Lack of/poor sleep could have contributed too because the older I get, the worse I handle sleep disruptions.

My HR is still a little elevated so maybe I should skip my coffee today or have just half a cup. Damn, am I sick of this shit, whatever it is! Really wish I knew too, because that might help my doctors and me figure out what’s best to do about it.

I have to pause for a minute to go to “Rainbow Beach.”

Okay, I did that and my breathing exercise. I will also reset my nervous system in a bit and hope these mysterious spikes stop. Quickly freshening up in the shower to help me cool down last night shouldn’t have jumped my heart to 126. We cranked up the AC last night and my skin was cool but my body was hot. When I feel normal, I’ll set it between 77-78 but tonight I’m gonna leave it at 75.

My weight is back under 160, too.

Oh, what a beautiful number I just saw…80. The thing is that it can spike at any time over 100. Guess I’ll just enjoy those double digits while I can. My doctor asked if I ever notice it going low and unfortunately, I don’t, LOL. I have heard of people who have heart rates go too slow, then too fast, and back and forth.

It’s still beating kind of hard, though. With no background sounds, I can hear it beating.

I’m going to make a point of cutting back on meat. My blood pressure tends to be a little high, even when I’m not having processed stuff that has more sodium. Why set myself up for a stroke or a heart attack? I would seriously rather drop dead of a heart attack than have a stroke that left me debilitated for life.

Jess says Belle is having a hard time recovering from surgery. She said she knows I’m in touch with her brother and don’t tell him she moved down here because he doesn’t know yet. I told her we haven’t been in touch for years. He added me and we’d make an occasional comment on each other’s posts and then he deleted me. I assumed he felt I was too old for him, LOL. Either that or he feared Jess would learn things through me that he didn’t want her learning like the fact that he had problems with drugs. I never said anything to her because that’s up to him.

My chat with Carol went well, and now some things make a little more sense to me. Actually, I think I helped her more than she helped me, LOL. There were some things about Kim that she didn’t know.

It isn’t MS she has but she’s very autistic which explains some of the behavioral issues. Also, it isn’t that she’s forgetful but has a type of verbal OCD, which was the best way Carol said she could describe it. She said she needs reassurance and for example, Kim will ask what’s for dinner. Carol will tell her lasagna. An hour later Kim will ask again. And again Carol will tell her lasagna. And then another hour later, Kim will ask yet again and Carol will say, “I told you what we’re having for dinner. What did I say we were having?”

“Lasagna,” Kim will say.

This now makes sense to me as to why she keeps asking me the same questions over and over. There have been times I thought wow, she remembers that I lived in a trailer in Auburn, but she can’t remember the answer I gave her 50 times over during the week when asked if I wear shorts a lot?

Kim doesn’t like any surprises and thrives on schedules and predictability, Carol said. I guess I must be part autistic too, because I can kind of relate to that. Even though I don’t have a schedule, I do at the same time. I still have routines I tend to follow around the same times within whenever my day is at the moment. I like mixing things up for variety at times, but good things that I know are coming. Not nasty surprises like last night. Taking off for Orlando at the last minute was fun. Feeling like I’m on fire and having my HR give me a run for the money is never fun. I don’t know at what point in my day tomorrow, I’ll blog, but I can pretty much guarantee that I’ll be waking up around 6pm.

I filled her in on the problems Aly and I had with her when we confronted her about the nasty “questions” she would ask on Ask about a decade ago and was surprised that Carol didn’t know about it because we both messaged her about the situation one time and she actually took Kim’s side.

We talked about the way she would create and delete accounts and impersonate both celebrities and people she knew. She mentioned June and other problems she’s had that I was aware of and says the reason Kim says she doesn’t have any disabilities is that, to her, she doesn’t have any. Kim is just being Kim and what she perceives as normal.

She functions at the level of a 5-year-old. On the flip side, she can be surprisingly clever at times. She said if you give her a number or a date, she’ll remember it for life. I guess that explains why she never forgets my birthday while my friend of 47 years never remembers, LOL.

She mentioned how she figured out how to get online through the smart TV, another thing I was aware of. This was before Aly died.

The funny and surprising part was all the phones Carol confiscated from her closet after tearing her room apart one day. The amazing thing was that they all had service! Neither of us could guess how she got ahold of them. I can’t imagine Aly sent them because you would think Kim wouldn’t be alone when opening packages. I’m guessing she got them through people she worked with.

She has no browser on the phone she uses now. And we both agree that letting her back onto social media would be a bad idea. She’ll never change. She may not revert back to her old ways overnight, but eventually, she’d get there. She’d spend every waking moment she had hounding the shit out of whoever she became obsessed with or pissed at and she’d go right back to impersonating people. She’s clearly obsessed with attention and even she said she hated that she didn’t get the attention she wanted when she used to be online.

After our chat, she followed up with a text thanking me for calling and asking that I let her know if Kim seems to be doing something she shouldn’t in order to keep her from harassing anyone and to help keep her safe.

I guess one time she divulged sensitive information that she shouldn’t have. Kim is very gullible and easy to manipulate, just like Molly. Actually, worse than Molly.

Kim shared a picture of her latest haircut which makes her look like a lesbian, LOL. She got a man cut for sure!

Helen texted me wanting to bump our appointment up to the next day, same time. I said that was fine and apologized for taking so long to get back to her and let her know that I had a bad night last night.

This week’s VZ challenge has me going from Ecuador to Thailand to Alaska to Kaori Island.