This summer has been one of just waiting. Waiting on doctors, hospitals, school districts, principals, universities, admissions directors.

The gory, boring details of my medical situation were recounted in «this previous post from a year-and-a-half ago». Here’s an update:

I have a saline suppression test (the third one I will have done) scheduled for 3-Aug; the posture test should follow soon thereafter. Saline suppression involves lying flat for four hours while saline is pumped in intravenously and my aldosterone levels are measured. The posture test involves standing and walking around for two straight hours. Not looking forward to that one. The idea is to measure the aldosterone levels produced during standing or lying down to see which system is kicking in.

While we’re waiting, I have to keep off Epleronone, the drug which suppresses aldosterone and raises my potassium levels. Hence, my aldosterone is up, I’m retaining lots of fluid, and my potassium has crashed. I was in the hospital from that back in December, shortly after arriving in Nashville (I passed out in the Jeep dealer’s waiting room while getting the oil changed in the Jeep; 911 was called and I was hauled off in an ambulance to Southern Hills Medical Center for a couple of days of potassium infusion. My potassium level then was about 2.9; yesterday, it was 3.1. Not good.) So, it’s been one month off Epleronone with another one left and the doc has tripled my potassium supplement intake prescription. I crash and burn, then feel normal, then crash and burn. Rinse, repeat, over and over and over. It gets old.

Doc says if saline suppression is positive and posture is negative then we can proceed to adrenalectomy, thank god. If the numbers are not what they need to be, we have to consider doing the fifth adrenal vein sampling. The aforementioned blog post has the gory details about what an AVS (adrenal vein sampling) entails and how messed up the first four were.

I did a very nice interview at a great school not far away back in May. The district seems to have hiring on hold, so I’m not sure what’s up with that. More on that later.

I’ve applied for admission to a special education/autism master’s degree program at Vanderbilt and am waiting to hear on that. More on that later as well.

So the daily pattern is get up, take potassium, let the dogs out for awhile, have breakfast. At noon, more potassium and beagles have their breakfasts. At 1, they settle in for a five-hour nap in the living room and I watch movies in the bedroom. Frank gets home at 6 and the beagles bestir themselves. I serve dinner, we clean up, and then spend the evening back in bed with movies and Warcraft while beagles stick to Unca Frankie like glue. In bed at midnight, to start the whole thing over.

The waiting, as opposed to doing the same things every day, is what’s hard. My career or further education is on hold. My medical fix is on hold. It’s sucky. Yet, it will pass. In August, one way or other, I’ll be back in the classroom, either regular or sub teaching, or back in the university for a two-year second Master’s degree. And things will also pick up on the medical front. In the meantime, I’m going to rest and take potassium and just float along.

Ain’t life grand sometimes?