Wake Up Call | Foxfire Fiber & Designs

Let me explain the pause in blogging – and please read this post carefully because it contains an important message for all my female readers.

My agenda last week included prepping to teach handspinning at WEBS, dyeing summer yarn share samples, helping Holly give lambs their CDT boosters, getting ready for the Open Farm on the 27th, collecting sheep and goat fecal samples for inspection, sowing another round of salad greens and staking the tomatoes, attending my nephew's high school graduation in New Hampshire, working on my book . . .

My "to do" list didn't include having a heart attack.

But that is exactly what happened to me in the biggest OMG moment of my life.

You should know right away that I'm fine. Shaken, but fine. I can't tell you how lucky I am – first of all to be here and secondly to have a very good prognosis, since my heart attack was somewhat atypical, not caused by coronary blockage.

I'm 47 years old, active, reasonably fit. I eat healthy. Mostly. I don't drink or smoke. I certainly didn't think I was a candidate for a heart attack which is why I dismissed the signs and symptoms and I waited WAY TOO LONG before acknowledging that something was seriously wrong and heading to the hospital last Wednesday.

Since then I've learned a number of interesting things about women and heart attacks. Women often experience heart attacks differently than men. Often there is no one moment of crushing chest pain.

Each year a frighteningly high number of women die either because they mistake the signs of heart attack (often for indigestion) or are misdiagnosed. For days prior, I'd been feeling like I was having the world's worst case of acid reflux.

And I've also learned that, as in my case, stress, not blocked arteries, is often the culprit.

It was a huge wake up call. An exclamation point at the tail end of one of the most chaotic spring seasons. So for the past few days I've been resting, reading, hanging out with Mike and my pupsters. As you may know, sitting still doesn't come naturally to me, but I'm seriously heeding my doctor's directives. Mike is taking good care of me. Holly is taking good care of the sheep. Yesterday I stepped into the pasture for just a minute for a few quick lamb-hugs with Mistral and Georgia.

I'm making a few changes for the next few weeks, to rest, recover, regroup, and work on my book. I don't want you all worrying about me or the sheep so I'll let you know how we're doing. Look for blog posts once a week – on Wednesdays – for the month of July.

Fortunately, I've had some unbelievably generous offers of back-up help for Holly and Mike with the sheep. I'll take them.

And I'll be getting help in the studio, so we can get the summer shares dyed and on their way over the next few weeks. I'm looking forward to seeing whoever can stop by on Sunday for the Sheep Shares Lamb Visit Day, though I'll probably let Mike and Holly give the grand tour. Bring your knitting, hang out with me and the lambs in the shade of the maple on the front lawn.