It’s Wednesday night, so the heart story continues.
Last week, I left talking about school, withdrawing from a semester a planning the next one.
While we’re talking about school, I think I forgot to say that one of my teachers actually let me Skype in for a bit to a class (I think it was so I could “be there” as they presented my final project), which was really fun.
Although, things around me in the hospital kept beeping, and I was hooked up to my heart rate monitor. I had some wires coming out of my hospital gown. Everyone was all, “Are you dying?” “Is your roommate dying?” “Are you part robot?” every time they heard sounds.
Side note: Speaking of that heart rate monitor, I don’t know if I mentioned this, but I got so very used to wearing one. I could still probably point out where you attach the leads. I don’t know if this happens to other patients, but I have super crazy dry skin. My skin got irritated after wearing a heart rate monitor for long periods of time. I’d have these weird little outlined circles around my body.
All right, so the semester was over (and somewhat worthless, ‘cause it didn’t really count for anything). The epicardial ablation was over (and somewhat worthless ‘cause it didn’t fix anything).
My open-heart surgery was scheduled for March 22, 2010.
We’ve covered through December 2009. January was all that blood testing stuff, since I was on Coumadin.
In February, I pretty much just worked as far ahead in classes as possible since I knew I’d be gone for so long in March.
There definitely can be some bright sides found in taking that semester of MP&E twice.
1) The major was really hard, and having a second crack at a bunch of really hard projects made me much better at producing and engineering.
2) One of my classes basically revolved around knowing one of the consoles and all the signal flows inside and out. They got a brand new console between semesters – so I got to learn about two different consoles in depth.
3) The soundalike project is often known as the hardest project in the program. The first time around, I did a Matchbox 20 song, ‘cause I knew someone who sounded a lot like Rob Thomas. I figured that having a singer who sounds so similar would help the project sound a lot like the record. (It did. That was definitely a helpful thing.)
The second time around in the class was like a fun bonus gift for me. I had the same teacher. He knew I’d successfully done the project once. So this time, I got to be bold, brave, and challenge myself. I did a Michael Jackson song!
Billie Jean actually turned out pretty awesome, if I do say so myself. (Although, I never was able to find a person who sounds like Michael – but listen to my instrumental, baby!)
Last week I said I’d talk to you more in this post about people who say “How are you handling all of this?” You know, what? Actually, I love people. I appreciate their concern, but I have a feeling I have a lot to say about this (more than what I have room for in this post), so let’s start here next week.