A Strange Week...

This past week has been unusual as my daughters were both gone on trips. My oldest daughter (15) was on an orchestra trip to Spain and Portugal and my youngest daughter (13) was on a missions trip to Nashville with a group from our church. Both girls have been away in the past for camp and things but I think that this is the first time that both have been gone at the same time. It was pretty quiet in the house (too quiet). The oldest got back this evening from her trip and the youngest will be back tomorrow around lunch time. I am thankful that both will be home in time for Father's Day!

The other unusual event this week is that I had an episode of Afib (very irregular and fast heart rhythm) on Wed night as I was getting ready to call into a conference bridge for a late night work session. My work requires occasional midnight sessions where we do updates to the customer's network. The work was planned for 01:00 (CDT) on Thursday morning as we were making updates to a system in the Mountain Time zone. As I was getting ready to call in for this work I realized that my heart was not in it's normal rhythm. The Afib episode went from about 12:30 until 2:15 when my heart came back into a normal rhythm (though it was a few hours later before it was at my normal heart rate). I was able to do my work during this time but it did add to the stress on my end. On Thursday afternoon I talked to my boss about this and she told me to take off the rest of Thursday and Friday to get some rest. So this is what I have been doing for the past day and a half. The Afib hasn't returned during this time and I am hoping that it will be some time before my next episode. I have been on medication for this condition since it was first diagnosed in September 2009. I had a 15 minute episode at the beginning of April this year but this latest episode was the longest I have had since I started on the medication. The episode in April was in the morning on a day that I was scheduled to fly to Seattle for 2 weeks. I was able to make the trip after that episode lasted so briefly but both of these 2 recent episodes have been at inconvenient times.

I am looking forward to the weekend and spending the time with my family. I can't wait to hear all the stories from Spain, Portugal and Nashville.