The blog has been pretty quiet lately. I had those goal to post a lot and then life happens. January was no different. 2017 did not start off well.

Christmas night I went down for the count with the stomach flu for a few days, shared it with mom and then she shared it back with me for a few days. It was miserable.

Then, I started not feeling well. My number one piece of advice is go with your gut. Its usually right. I ended up at the local ER twice in one week due to not being able to breath. They immediately ruled out a heart attack (which I didn’t think I was having) and sent me home, even going so far as to say, “I don’t know what more to do with you”.

I knew I didn’t feel right. Luckily I had a 3 month followup with the Lipid Clinic at Johns Hopkins (they specialize in treating lipid disorders and getting my cholesterol numbers to be a “thing of beauty”). I mentioned my symptoms to my doctor there and he took one look at the vein in my neck (its like the pressure gauge for the pressure in the lungs, apparently) and immediately said, you need to start diuretics and follow up in one week.  So alas I did, and a week later I still wasn’t seeing much difference so he added another diuretic for the holiday weekend and I was to call on Tuesday morning.

Tuesday morning came and I was not feeling well at all, difficulty breathing, my abdomen swollen, chest pain. I phoned his assistant and immediately got a call back that I needed to get myself to Hopkins that evening, I was being admitted.

Turns out I was in diastolic heart failure. All that not being able to breath was me being in heart failure. Thank you doctors, but I know what is up.

And so mom and I spent a week on the cardiac floor, she read her kindle and was there for moral support and help in many ways 😉 and I was there poked and prodded for 7 days.

I also got to be a part of a sleep study that they are doing to gain research between heart failure and sleep apnea. As in, they wanted to do a sleep study to see if I had sleep apnea. Turns out I have a mild form and my local pulmonologist is referring me to a colleague in his practice who specializes in sleep disorders. Sleep apnea and heart patients are not a good mix, so we are going to get on this stat.

They also started me on a  beta blocker to get my heart rate down, I was sitting at 130-140 at rest and it needs to be between 60-100 at rest, my doctors would prefer I sit closer to 60. They know my heart pumps well, but doesn’t relax as it should. It took 5 beta blockers and 19 months and multiple doctors to find one that my body could tolerate. But my heart rate is now between 60-85 at rest.

I followed up with my local cardiologist yesterday and everything looks as it should. He even commented that he doesn’t know anyone else who would be more excited to see how well I’m feeling, but he was pretty sure he was the #2 most excited person. Its been a long journey, that took many turns to getting on the right medications, the right balance of things to where I feel well. The past 10 days since discharge is the best I have felt since before my heart attack and that is saying a lot.

We savor the good days. We make our way through the rough days and we soldier on as heart warriors. Its what we do.