Troubles McSteans

Those of you who are not new might remember a few posts back in '08 ( this one ), '09 ( here ), and '10 ( this guy ) regarding my heart and my decision to not get a defibrillator placed. To save you time, the basics were that years of transplant medication and severe kidney disease had weakened my heart. I had testing done in '08 and '09 that indicated I was nearing the danger zone for a heart attack, which isn't nearly as cool as Kenny Loggins makes it sound. My ejection fraction, which is basically a measure of heart function, had been drifting around 30-35%. This is not as dire as it sounds - most healthy people have an EF of 50-75%, so we're not grading on a 100 scale here. Nevertheless, 30 is not great. It's also not definitively alarming, just mildly alarming. My cardiologist put it in my hands to decide if I wanted to go ahead with the surgery. I had many concerns at this point: That sounds really uncomfortable. What if it malfunctions and acciden...

 *Taps microphone* Hello? Is this thing on? Hi. Wow, it's literally been 10 years since my last entry. I'm not sure I remember how this works, but I was revisiting some old posts this week, cringing at the hideous background and feeling the urge to try blogging again. My apologies for being a bit rusty, but I hope enough time has passed that I won't tire of it soon. Those that are familiar with my work know that this is a blog largely about the mundane. I will (probably) not be getting political. It's not that I don't care, it's that there are plenty of people shouting into the blogosphere about politics. Look, it's been a super shitty year for everyone, so my goals here are: 1. Start logging snippets of my life to help me remember things happened. 2. Hopefully take your mind off of the world for 5 minutes as I complain about crap that could happen in any given year that is not necessarily 2020. Like a story about how my dog will not eat. This is not a new d...