Chest Pains, Homeschool and Housework, OhMy!

Saturday I posted on Facebook that I was again experiencing serious chest pains and that my husband took me to the emergency room and of course, no cardiologist was on duty. That was on Friday night. We paid for an appointment for Sunday night. And I went Sunday night with his cousin (because he had an appointment with the dentist to complete some dental work already started.) And the stupid cardiologist called in sick and we proceeded to walk about 8 miles in circles through about 4 hospitals in the area looking for one with a cardiologist. And of course, NO JOY.

I got home sweaty and hot and really pissed off, wondering if I were to drop dead of a heart attack would anyone in the Egyptian medical community give a crap. Probably not. I decided to contact my best friend, Sara, who I had neglected to bother with all of this because she just had her third baby and has enough crap on her plate with getting used to having 3 kids, going back to work as a surgical nurse after maternity leave, school for her oldest son just starting within the last few weeks and her mother-in-law living upstairs from her. But the whole "surgical nurse" thing and a plethora of knowledge as to where to find specialists in this city trumped all of her problems. So she told me to call the "heart center" downtown Alexandria. I did. And I have an appointment tomorrow at 5:30pm YAY. But what to do with the rest of my day?

So, while I was trying to track down the "heart center" phone numbers online today, Aiman started yelping and howling about ants "eating" his legs. Apparently one ant climbed on his foot and he freaked out. He IS my bug-fearing germophobe. I sent him to shower and then found out what the problem was. Aiman was charged with sweeping the living room last night after dinner and Mohamed was charged with wiping down the coffee table. (Our place is too small to have a dining room unless we want to lose a bedroom....so we opted to just eat in the living room at the coffee table.) Mohamed got his usual case of TWC's (Table-washing cramps) and had to go poop for about an hour or so. Of course, by the time he got out of the john, he'd lost 2 pounds, was light-headed and completely forgot about the task he'd been assigned. Aiman just said, "I don't want to" and went to bed. I was pretty much in pain and had already gone to sleep so it didn't get done. At any rate, I pushed furniture around, swept the house and mopped the house with kerosene water (kills bugs and as long as I don't smoke while I'm doing it, it's not dangerous provided the house is well-ventilated.) I swept off all the area rugs and put them back, returned the furniture and then made my phone calls to the hospital while sucking down the coffee I hadn't had due to Mop-mania Ant-Killing Mission.

I did three loads of laundry, "homeschooled" for math because no one went to school today because my husband was afraid that the ongoing in-fighting had reached our outskirt area of town. WHAT DID I EVER DO TO HIM TO DESERVE THAT??? Truth be told he thought he had it on good authority that it was unsafe to send the kids to school today. When I found out that his source was one of his cousins who barely understands the evening news, I reminded him that she was the same one who dragged his nieces down to my apartment when she was babysitting them and had all of them terrified that Israel had attacked Alexandria and were currently bombing our neighborhood. Why? Because the people on the block behind ours were having a wedding and shot off about 30 bottle rockets all at once. They'd never seen this type of fireworks before (they're illegal here) and freaked out and ran downstairs terrified and crying while my kids were staring out the bedroom window going, "Ooooh!....Aaaaaah!" So, while I shifted gears between 5th, 6th, 7th and 9th grade levels of geometry and algebra, I managed to fold and put away another 2 loads of laundry, solve a Rubik's cube (by popping all of the pieces out and putting it back together so that the kids all think I'm a genius), pick all the pubic hair off of the bar of soap in the shower (far too many males in this household) and get the dishes washed up. I sent the boys out to pick up the stuff I needed for dinner and got the kids fed and MOST of the homework done before my husband got out of bed at 2.

I try to keep busy because activity actually makes my chest hurt less. So, it's not exercise-induced. I'm thinking it's stress. But with the high-cholesterol levels and this houseful of teenagers, I really need to have it checked. Here's to my health.