So I had planned to go on a little photography expedition today, attempting a walk to the loch to do some landscape pictures. Never make plans…
It was probably that early-morning bad dream that precipitated it. In this dream, Cleopatra had been reanimated by means of DNA technology and installed in a glass-sided pyramid for public viewing; she seemed quite happy with her new life and delighted in throwing elegant Egyptian poses for the paying punters. However, a group of Christian fundie fanatics, convinced that this was the Devil’s work, set out to destroy her and the pyramid. I’m unsure of what they actually did, but their actions somehow precipitated Armageddon. This particular Armageddon entailed rampaging monsters, howling zombies and rapidly rising floodwaters; I therefore found myself rushing around battling dinosaurs, escaping from zombies, looking for Cleopatra (who had vanished along with her pyramid), generally saving the world and wondering why I wasn’t writing scripts for Steven Spielberg.
Anyway-
I woke up at this point with the familiar 190 bpm THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP of a tachycardia attack. They usually come at night and 4 out of 5 times they last no more than ten minutes or so. After about half an hour of THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP I decided it was time for an Oxprenolol beta-blocker; nine out of ten times, one beta-blocker, for me, is enough to stop a tachycardia attack in half and hour or so. (I take one 40mg dose a day routinely – that’s not enough to stop all attacks, but is enough to allow me function fairly normally, instead of sitting around in a stupified doze). But this was obviously the one time out of ten that this strategy wouldn’t work.

my window

My view today

To cut a long story short, I’ve spent the entire day flat out in bed, waiting for the THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP to stop. Although I didn’t have radio or TV (we have no broadcast reception at all in or around the house – TV and radio come via satellite and telephone and internet come via a BT landline) I wasn’t too bored. I keep an iPod loaded with interesting podcasts for just such occasions, I had a book (though keeping it upright got too tiring after a while); also, I keep my camera by my bedside when its not being used and was able to try out different shutter and arperture settings with some indoor photography – the pic is the view I had all day.
It wasn’t so bad, really – B regularly delivered cups of tea and made me toast when I asked. The THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP finally finished around 5 and I was able to get up and get myself something to eat.
Hopefully I’ll be able to get out tomorrow for some photography.