Friday the 13th, you suck!

So after having that bathroom disaster, things got even worse!

We left work early to head over to Penola for the Coonawarra Cabernet Celebrations weekend.  It was a bit stressful getting away, packing the camper, a bit of food, clothes etc plus finishing everything at work but we were booked to go out to dinner at a beautiful restaurant for dinner so that was the reward! 

We got to Penola Caravan Park at about 4.30pm and set up Pearl.  We needed a few things from IGA so I went and got those.

When I returned to the park, I parked the car and got out of the car...and boom! I started having one of my heart palpitation attacks (diagnosed as Supraventricular Tachycardia)!   It just came on like that!

I told Gus straight away and I sat for a while, hoping it would pass.  It didn’t feel as intense as the last one I had in June.  After about 30 minutes, it was still thumping away so we decided to go to the hospital. By now it’s 6.40pm.

As luck would have it,  the hospital is 500 metres down the road from the caravan park!  Being a country (bush) hospital, it was all closed up for the night so we rang the A&E button.  A nurse let us in and showed me to the A&E room.  Lovely Nurse Annette did some obs and ran an ecg to get a trace of what my heart was doing.

She then rang the doctor (the only one in this small town!) and probably interrupted his Friday night dinner!  He was there in a matter of minutes and we chatted about my previous episodes.  He tried ringing my cardiologist in Adelaide but I guess he had dinner plans too!

Doc decided to give me a half tablet of Sotolol (a beta blocker) to bring my heart rate down.  He hoped it would take effect in half an hour or so....so we wait!

After that half hour, the rate hadn’t come down enough so I was given the other half tab and had to wait again.  I could feel that it was starting to work as I couldn’t feel my heart beating so fast.

When Gus took this at 8.20pm, things were starting to settle down.  I did not want a night in hospital, thank you!

Dinner plans were cancelled (dammit!)...

They were happy for me leave when my heart rate got down to 94  and I said I felt normal again.  My BP was good too.

I got discharged at 8.40pm so we headed back to the caravan park and we had toasted sandwiches for dinner - not quite what we had in mind!

~

This little procedure I’m having on Monday, 23rd Oct cannot come soon enough! 

😫

After a good nights sleep, we got up the next morning and went to a breakfast at Balnaves wines...

We had this lovely breakfast of sweetcorn fritters, mushroom ragu, spiced tomatoes, bacon and a rocket, grapefruit and quinoa salad. It was meant to be washed down with a Balnaves Sparkling Cabernet ... but I was off the grog and had orange juice instead.

~

After that we went to a few wineries for Gus to do tastings then we went to Majella wines where we had lunch.  After tasting a few, Gus bought some wine then we headed back to the camper.

Gus lit the OzPig so we relaxed the afternoon away...

This was our site - we had an ensuite bathroom which is to the left, out of picture.

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We packed up on Sunday and drove the 50km home.  We unpacked Pearl and Gus gave her a wash and vacuum and even polished her. She’s sparkling and ready for her next run now.   I washed towels and bed linen, rearranged a cupboard that held a porta-loo (which we have taken out) to hold general items.  By then I was feeling pretty knackered so I watched YouTube vids for a while.

Gus cooked a beer can chicken for dinner and I did the veggies in the oven.

I had a bag of Tasmanian flour left from our trip last year so I made a batch of bread rolls...

These went into the freezer for future use.

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Big weekend! Next stop Flinders Cardiac!

Cheers - Joolz xx