School started a few weeks ago and it's been very interesting to say the least. I'm trying to get back in the schedule of getting up to go to class, commuting twice a week to an area CC for a night class and running my volunteer recovery group. I'm also in the proccess of dealing with my heart condition, which is relatively new.
The only thing that has been really crappy was this whole situation I had last week.
I was working at this thing called the Rennisance Festival. The name pretty much says it all, but yeah. So the place that I run my volunteer at, we are running a Funnel Cake booth there as a fundraiser. We just expanded and we need to raise some money for rent and whatnot.
So I was working last Sunday and all this bulls**t went down. First off, the people running the RenFest have NO idea what they're doing, and what I mean by that is that none of them are communicating with each other, which makes it really hard to do your job.
Anyway, we started around 9am and it goes until 7pm although none of the vendors leave until AT LEAST 8pm or 8:30. Anyway, around 4pm, Lesa, our Executive Director comes to get me and says some people need to talk to me. I go out back and there's a Sheriff's Deputy out there, and of course I start wondering what I did.
So he takes me in this shed and four more deputies show up. The site opperation manager shows up and they start accusing me of stealing $40 (first off, if I was going to steal money, why only $40? I'd be stealing a helluva lot more than that). They claimed a "Secret Shopper" came through our stand twice and each time passed a marked $20 bill to me and neither time it came back to them (periodically they collect all the $20's so we don't have a bunch of money that people could steal). Anyway, I offered to let them search me and search my bag because I know that I didn't take the darn money. One sheriff's deputy was threatening to arrest me (although he was a real dick).
So they have a lady search me, and I even offered to let her search my ankle brace, and she told them that I didn't have anything on me. They kept saying they were singling me out, but they were. They kept claiming that I could've passed the money off to someone else in our booth, and I told them that I didn't, but that if they were so convinced that I did, they should search everyone else. Needless to say, they never did.
By this time, I was in a full-fledged panic attack. Lesa, my manager came up and hugged me and said that she knew that I didn't take the money. I was freaking out and told her that I wanted to go home. She told me that one of my good friends that was working the booth was going to take me home because he was furious about what happened.
By the time he got up there, I was hyperventilating. He flipped out on the sheriff's deputy (he's VERY protective of me), and I kept telling him that my chest hurt, and that's when he told the deputy that I have a heart condition.
The deputy called for the RenFest EMTs who came to check me out. By the time they got there, I was so light-headed and about to pass out that they had to lay me down on the floor because I couldn't sit or stand on my own. Even though my heart was racing (140bpm), my pulse was really thready and the EMT had trouble finding it. My BP was 145/100. Because of my pre-existing heart condition, they couldn't release me, so they had to call the local fire and medical. The two RenFest EMTs (a guy and a girl) were so awesome and nice, they were holding my hand and talking to me, just trying to calm me down, get me to breathe deep and whatnot.
By the time the local F&M got there, not only were my vitals the same but my oxygen had dropped to 87. They put me on oxygen and took me to the nearest hospital. It turned out that on top of everything else, I had a fever of 100.6 which was weird. They gave me some meds for my heart and some Ativan to calm me down and let me go home.
Turns out that their secret shopper had the wrong booth. She was claiming that she saw me stick the money in the hot pink, skin tight spandex shorts I was wearing under my costume, which was funny because I had on light blue, loose fitting boxers and everyone saw that. All the people at the booth, the RenFest EMTs, the local F&M, the doctors and nurses at the hospital.
Anyway, my manager is still working on getting me an apology from a lot of RenFest people (secret shopper, site operation manager), and we're also going to be sending them my ambulance/hospital bill and request that they pay at least half of it. In theory, I could sue them, but I'm not going to.
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BUT!!! I saw my new cardiologist today and he's amazing (a helluva lot better than my last one)! The hospital he works for (I won't say names) is ranked one of the best for heart care in the nation! He seems really legit, really on top of his game. He changed my meds because of some stuff in my history and he is going to be repeating some of the tests that were done in the hospital (IE the ones that came back abnormal and tipped them off to my heart condition). Anyway, I'm very pleased with him, I'm getting my ECG done next week and then I'll see him in a month.
In other news, I'm going to be in my campus newspaper tomorrow! They are doing an article about the free tutoring program I use, and they interviewed my tutor (I used him last semester) because he's been tutoring there forever, and they came in to take some pictures of us during my tutoring appointment today. Yippe, I'm going to be a celebrity haha.
Anyway, I don't have much in the way of recovery news. I'm taking it one day at a time. I'm working the steps and keeping in touch with my sponsor, but taking a break from meetings (read my last few blogs if you want to know why). Hopefully if I take a little sabbatical, things will be better when I come back.
Anyhoo, much love to my recovery friends and I hope you are all doing well!
xoxo Cait
