hello, heartbeat

Santa Barbara. Home. LAX. Dubai. Dar es Salaam. Serengeti. Kilimanjaro. Zanzibar. Cape Town. Johannesburg. LAX. Home.

We made the plans. We booked the flights. I graduated, and I came home to gear up and get the show on the road.

Stop. Slow down. What's that? My heart beating out of my chest... like a hammer. Literally, my heart kept beating like a hammer. Stress? Anxiety? I just graduated from college. Finals are over, forever. And I don't even have to get a job yet. I don't think stress explains it...

I kind of brushed it off, assuming I would be fine. But luckily I have a brilliant boyfriend who can advise me to do things like take my resting heart rate. 105/60? Not okay when you literally just got up and walked over to the microwave from the couch. His recommendation: just go to the doctor already.

The doctor couldn't explain it either when I went in to get checked out two Fridays ago. And then Kaiser started calling me at 4am on that Saturday morning to come in to the ER. "Your red blood cell count is critically low. You need to come in right away." Oh, great.

Four hours of torturous uncertainty later (sorry, Mom and Dad), I was diagnosed with iron deficiency anemia. Perhaps it was related to my "low-iron diet" (still skeptical about that; I'm a good eater), but whatever my problem was, it has been deteriorating over time to the point that my body just couldn't compensate any more. Not exactly prime condition to do a six day trek up a 19,000 foot mountain in Africa.

From what I can gather (sorry, Gleb, if this is not precisely correct), without enough iron, my body was making tiny red blood cells... and not enough of them. Since red blood cells oxygenate our bodies, my heart was working extra hard to try to pump these scarce little blood cells around. Cue: hammering heartbeat. This also explained why I was having muscle cramping in my lower legs for the past month and why I felt the need to wear more bronzer than usual. The human body is an incredible--and delicate--machine.

So, back to the game plan:

Graduate from Santa Barbara. Come home. Fly to Africa. Safari in the Serengeti. Climb Kilimanjaro. Scuba dive Zanzibar. Explore Cape Town. Visit Johannesburg. Fly home.

Insert a big scare, a blood transfusion, some iron supplements, some healing recipes... and we're good to go. Just got a follow-up blood test: "Your red blood cell count is back in the normal range. You should be fine to do the hike with these numbers." Thanks Dr. Nguyen!!!

And while my body may not be the strongest it has ever been, and my red blood cells might have needed a boost, I'm still saying hello to Mama Africa... and all the challenges and adventures she has in store for me!

Until next time, I'll be pumping iron and eating steak. (And doing lotttssss of packing.)

COUNTDOWN: 3 days!

p.s. In the future, my posts will consist of lots of pictures, too. Just didn't really have any blood pics worth sharing ;)