Well faithful followers, an eventful week has passed. Let me first provide a couple personal details that I am not sure appear earlier. When I had on 25 lbs of water weight at the beginning of the current crisis, I was 262 lbs. Today a few weeks later, I am 219 lbs (and in total absence of muscle tone). You do the arithmetic. I am putting some weight back on though eating less than 1800 cals per day. I have been a little dehydrated and the heart failure team has upped my daily H2O to 86 oz which I am not doing. I am finding it easy to do the 2000 ml--around 67 oz though and usually end up the day near that. I don't recommend my experience as a way to lose weight! I am probably rehydrating, accounting for some of the weight gain.
We drove to SLC last Wed to attend my first clinic in the Cardiac Failure unit there at IMC in Murray UT and stay the remainder of the week in SLC with Lisa.
I am really impressed with the people I have met there. But I have bamboozled the clinic. They have dc'ed all but one heart med--a nasty, side-effect laden drug called amiodorone. In addition, I am on a coumadin-like drug called Eliquis (see the TV ads). I take a staten still and now a sleep aid called trazodone at bedtime. Myself, I have discontinued the boat load of supplements I had built up over the years. Life is simpler on that front. I am getting occasional edema in my lower extremities after being on my feet a lot, but it dissipates over night. If that doesn't totally go away with my recovery, ie no daily build up at all, I anticipate a continued association with lasix and potassium. But let's not go there yet. Life is simpler without them. And, my rehab program has not yet begun.
So, they are data gathering. I am wearing--for 30 days--a three-lead heart monitor. The leads hook up to three sticky paper electrodes (?) a new group of which I install, post-shower, daily. The wires go into a battery-powered unit about a half-inch thick by 2" on a side, like a deck of cards cut across the middle. That slides easily into a front pants/shorts pocket. It is accompanied by a several-generations-old cell phone in my other pocket on which I am to report any symptoms. The phone has been re-purposed to do this. There is a choice among 10 or so--dizziness, pain, etc. I have only called in once to clarify whether I should report being light headed, since that is not on the symptom list. (They made a note.) Any light headedness I am experiencing usually follows my pill taking about an hour or so in the a.m.. Other than that, I have reported nothing, since there has been nothing to report! The idea, as I understand it, is that the company supplying the equipment--the crafty devils--gets the monitor data and sends it to the hospital along with points on the data chart, if any, where symptoms are reported so the symptoms can be correlated with the heart data. I just have to keep the phone within 15 feet of the heart monitor during use, so it resides next to the bed overnight and I carry it all during the day. There are the appropriate batteries and charging schedules to make sure the stuff has the juice to go 24-hrs per cycle. Change over today will follow the close of this post. At the end of the 30 days the entire show goes in a handy mailer, remembering to take the batteries out of the monitor so it doesn't go beep in the p.o.
Other than that I have an appointment to see the clinic again in a couple weeks at which I believe I will get an electro-cardiogram. They are interested in a normal sinus rhythm data set, since the one that led me into the hospital was taken during a-fib. I am interested too, since I desperately want to see what my ejection fraction looks like during recovery.
In the meanwhile it is 2000 ml of liquids, less than 2000 mg of sodium, and 1800 or less calories daily for this kid for the foreseeable future. On which I am happy, because my lovely wife is inventive and a recording fool.
The Not-So-Excellent Adventure. On the way home on Sunday afternoon we were proceeding north on the 15 at speed, about 70 mph when Jan was forced to run over a large piece of what looked like cattle guard or some such iron structure, maybe six inches high, four feet across and maybe six-nine feet wide. We hopped up on it and off it with the left side of the car. The front wheel was impacted and we awaited bad outcomes. But nothing immediately happened. We got into the far right lane and proceeded. It wasn't ten miles and the left rear tire blew. Fortunately we were at the 12th street exit ramp into Ogden onto which we limped with flashers going. We pulled off the road but left the affected tire on the pavement.
This being Utah and it being Sunday a couple nearby tire shops (Les Schaub; Jack's Tire and Oil) we knew would be closed. The rear of the car was filled with perishables for me. No O2 if we stayed somewhere nearby. (I am using O2 at night through my bipap machine.) We were driving away from the dealership in N SLC where the car would need to go.
But this is Utah. In 10 sec or so a car parks in front of us and asks if we need help. We say yes. He says, I'll change the tire for you. Empty out the rear, get out the donut, jack up the car, all of which he did in jig time. I said how fortunate for us that the person who stops is adept. He had a nicely trimmed, salt-and-pepper goatee, and full sleeves for those of you who know the terminology. He said he was going home to change out brakes on a car there. He also said that if it were his mum and dad out there, he hoped that someone would help them. I thought who the hell is he talking about. That's the doddering old fool I've become. Of course, the reference was to the 77 and 75 yr old he was helping. He would take no money. In no time we were driving the 89 North--no freeway that--at the sedate speed of 50 mph. And safely home 90 minutes later. Now I have to call the dealer (90 miles), and the insurance company to see how to proceed. I am not sure we can get to the dealer without being on the freeway and we are endangered there at 50 mph. Oh well, it will all work out.
Henry Hawk and His Relatives. Hawks are falling into our bed room chimney. We had one last week. They usually tend to be kestrels and I have no idea why they do that. The chimney is capped with an arch so perhaps they mistake it for a hollow tree. We usually give them a couple days to quiet down and open the flue and they drop into the fire place which is fronted by a heavy duty screen behind which they attempt to attack us. Then Jan or I throw a towel over them and release them out our bedroom door. We did that with Henry, a mature kestrel, this week on Mon. In any case, what was unusual with this last episode was that another drops down in there on Tues and we let it sit over night--we are leaving for SLC--see above, in a couple hours. We open the flue. This one doesn't want to come down. Well, this is rural Utah. The animal control guy knows us from a nearly annual visit to pick deer carcasses of those who have not survived the winter. He's there in 45 minutes reaches up and grabs the hawk. It turns out to be a young one and it further turns out that as a boy he used to trap them and train them to bring back bits of hamburger they would throw out--all highly illegal, of course.
All for now...hopefully a quiet couple of weeks during which I have nothing to report of consequence.
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