I decided many moons ago not to do this if it all possible. After all, 20 years of blogging, or close to it, (I haven't checked timeline lately) has a wee audience and camaraderie and a vested interest (we hope) in our well-being. Not the royal we there but referring to us valiant bunch of bloggers.
So on followup from previous post here I am with a leaky lung (hello breathlessness!), I was just full of fluid, in a retention competition I would have been in serious running for the gold cup. And, oh yes, congestive heart failure which scared the bejaysus out of me. He showed me the lung xrays, good gawd, sez I how was I walking around?
You did very well in coming in to see me so fast, many put these symptoms down to a bad flu go to bed and well, sez Doc and gave me a sad look.
He measured the diameter of my lower legs, my left was 2" bigger than my right. All fluid. So 8 pills, heavy diuretics, confined to barracks until Friday when I see him again with (hopefully) my breath back and my lungs released from their misery and bonus - matching legs.
He is meanwhile lining me up with a cardiologist, an echo chamber cardiogram and a halter for 24 hours to check on my errant heart and is very busy assuring me that with modern medicine, this is not overly serious but will need the consistent and ongoing attention of my newly expanded team of specialists.
Elsewhere, I resigned form all boards, committees and upcoming teaching projects and my life is now an empty blackboard filled with sock-making, reading and writing as I await further marching orders into the maw of medical speculation and testing.
And seriously? I can't praise my medical team highly enough.
And universal health care. Every country on the planet should have it. It is a human right. Like water.
Herewith a pair of socks I knit for Daughter - just to cheer us all up.
Goodness, so many serious medical conditions to contend with. I hope the newly expanded medical team can make life a bit easier for you. But what a shame you felt you had no alternative to resigning from so many boards and projects.
ReplyDeleteYou're right about blog silence being worrying. Every so often one of my regular blogmates stops posting and I have no idea what happened. Bored with blogging? Other commitments that take priority? They've died? Who knows?
Many have died Nick as I subsequently ascertain. But lovely like some I followed that there was a "last post".
DeleteI was saddened by my many resignations but it had to be. I needed to conserve my energy for masimum healing.
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Well, not quite the news we hoped for. Thank heavens for modern medicine and many coloured pills. I hope you'll be able to take up other jobs than sock knitting later on - even though your sock are wonderful.
ReplyDeleteMe too Uglemor. I need much stimulation and brain use :). The congestive was a huge shock as I fully anticipated just kidney malfunction as I've been living with this for a long while. But everything's connected and the body runs down with its deteriorating parts.
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So glad to hear you are pleased with your medical team but sorry to hear you have a medical issue to be addressed. I would be at a loss if any of the several bloggers I read daily disappeared. The ones I enjoy, including yours, bring a bit of good advice and/or sharing of thoughts that are sometimes comforting - sometimes very amusing - and sometimes just sympatico with my lifestyle and the aging process. I look forward to your blog daily and send all the best wishes that you handle this newest challenge with strength and humor. I know you will. Hugs.
ReplyDeleteThank you Regina! I must give Daughter or Niece a final post on here should anything happen to me. I know a few friends did that and it was terribly sad but then I could grieve properly. I miss them to this day.
DeleteIt is good to share the trials and tribulations of old age with each other in a digital age that would have seemed so sci-fi even 30 years ago.
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HUGE thanks for the update. I was worrying. Hooray for what sounds to be an excellent team (and universal health care).
ReplyDeleteI hope that managing this new raft of illnesses goes well, and I really, really love those socks.
Thank you EC, they keep my hands busy and my thoughts serene :)
DeleteMy palpitations have subsided which I'm thrilled with so onward to Friday when I hope these latest trials will be proved to be surmountable.
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Thank you for keeping us informed, WWW. My sincere hopes that your present issues will, in time and with monitoring and proper treatment, begin to ease into the background, as part and parcel of what life has to be, during this last lap of ours. Himself has heart issues, had a pacemaker fitted years ago and renewed after several more years. We were worried and scared at first but it is now something he hardly thinks about - except at monitoring times. Big hugs. I'm pleased, at least, that your waiting time is over
ReplyDeleteand your good docs seem confident that all issues are eminently treatable.
Keep 'socking' it to 'em WWW!
Socking it out here T :) Very comforted by what your wrote about Himself. We all have fears, we all know we are just holding a place for our own call to the Big Sky but it's good to know we may have an extension of time here.
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Aging is a thief!
ReplyDeleteThe diagnosis absolutely sucks so I hope you continue to find joy wherever it is available
Thank you Kylie, yes it is a thief and we have many woes to contend with as we fall into the eternal pit, slowly we hope!
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Hmmm. I'll be very interested to follow your progress. I have had the same symptoms, examinations, tests, complete heart workups taking all day in hospital, similar if not same results and diagnosis, but given no medications or treatments. My left leg looks like an elephant's, my lungs had some kind of watery crop (gone now over several months and periodic x-rays, my palpitations were scary and tiring, if nothing else but have settled down. Get some exercise, lose a bit of weight was all I heard. I was given diuretics and told I *could* use them, but I don't because they cause extreme night time leg cramps.
ReplyDeleteTwo same or similar presentations, two very different methods of treatment, from two different Canadian healthcare authorities. Both "universal". EMMA
Forgot this bit: ..."heart slightly enlarged, nothing unusual in a person your age... . Carry on." Since I was getting breathless during exercise, I did ask for an inhaler, and have used a few times before walking, the last time several months ago because not walking because hip/back problems. Are we all going to just fall apart all at once now I ask my various parts?? Learning true meaning of ankle bone connected to shoulder bone or whatever that saying is.
DeleteI am sorry you are having such negative experiences Emma while I am not. I do talk to my heart (sounds crazy, I know) and my meditations help place me and focus me, ground me and centre me. If at all possible think positively. I find engaging with my doctors is helpful too though one (my nephrologist that I've had for years and years) refuses to crack. But the others respond.
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I wish the news were better but it is amazing what they can do today. My husband had a defibrillator implanted in 2008. He continued to do everything he had always done including regular hikes and swimming. A few times his heart stopped (like on a hike alone up our local mtn.) but the defib did what it was there for. The last time though was just on a routine walk about 2 yrs ago. He then went to his electrocardiologist who said he would be lucky if he lived 5 more years. I just said to that guy that we would all be lucky to live 5 more years. So with a very low injection fraction (like around 10%) he continues on - we swam laps yesterday. He is on amioderone. But all our paths are different. I have always loved your blog but rarely comment. Love the socks. I have the second one on the needles for my grandaughter. Knitting, running races in younger years, your take on religion, your activism.....I think we are cut from the same cloth. Love you.
ReplyDeleteOh Mary thank you for those kind words, I always love hearing from the "lurkers" who are usually cut from the same cloth like you say. good news on your husband there, it cheered me up immeasurably.
DeleteI truly appreciate your sharing your family's experience.
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good heart doctors are worth their weight in gold. Terry has three who are pretty amazing. Drugs have come so far in helping heart health that it boggles the mind. Perhaps you have seen the recent news saying a regimen of drugs can be better than certain heart surgeries. Sure makes one sit up and take notice and hope the docs are too.
ReplyDeleteI do know that heart surgeries not recommended for women. We have different systems and all tests have been conducted on the males of our species. I was horrified to find that out. So even with drugs we have to be careful.
DeleteGood for Terry and his great results.
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Jeez, I go away for a few days and all hell breaks out around here!
ReplyDeleteGlad everything seems to be on track and you're home, not in hospital.
I will never understand how our neighbours to the south are so afraid of universal health care. I guess the big insurance companies and for-profit hospitals can afford effective propaganda.
I've given my blog's username and password to my youngest son in case I die suddenly and unexpectedly at a "young" age, as the grandmother I'm a clone of did. Though she died at 47 and I've made it to 60; these are the benefits of not being dirt poor (and often hungry, so probably malnourished) as a child, as she was, and of not being a cigarette smoker or a hard worker. I hope he remembers that information or where he has it written down, because I don't. I've saved that stuff on my laptop so I can sign in automatically and quickly ... I'll be sorry if the laptop craps out, won't I? I think I have things written down in an address book.
Anyway enough about me. Keep us informed, keep your chin up, and get better. Love your local pictures. xoxoxo Kate
Thanks Kate. I need to go over a lot with Daughter though my will, etc., is organized and I am doing my best with all my binders et al which don't seem that important now that I've had this almighty shock to the system!
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It is good to hear you are ok. I know someone who was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and it was easily treatable. Modern medicine is wonderful, as a good public health system for all as MOST of the civilised world has.
ReplyDeleteYes, as a 15 year blogger, I have become fond of bloggers and their lives and actually care about them and find them interesting. But some just disappear, with an explanation or at times without. It makes me sad. I was thinking of one today who used to write in the voice of her dog Charlie. Then I think, maybe my blog gets too much for people and they just give up, or maybe they still read and don't comment. But that doesn't explain them stopping blogging. I expect I will be blogging until I can no longer. It is a hobby and I mostly enjoy the interactions and the amazing people I have met personally. Once I commit to reading someone's blog and we have that necessary interaction, I am a keeper.
Good to know you're a keeper Andrew - as you are to me. I still treasure memories of bloggers I've met in the flesh, amazing how the relationships translate well into real life. I grieve those who passed on, often unexpectedly. One is dying now, and shares her upcoming demise with her devoted followers. Very brave. So did two others caught unawares by a casual xray.
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Whichever guardian angel led you to the doctor, thank you, thank you. I'm surprised at the doctor's comment that so many think this type of thing is flu and just go to bed. And die. I'm so grateful for your doctor and your daughter for taking you and hope that now you will soon be so much better. How does a leaky lung happen? I've heard of collapsed lungs, but don't know how that happens either.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is River I wanted to go to bed and wait for it all to pass. I hate making a fuss, I hate hospitals (bad experience as a child) and being powerless - like most of us, LOL. I had to commit to Daughter to making the appt and going. The pleuratic (?) lining separates from the other bits and captures fluid between all the bits. Even 60 years ago this could kill. I was truly horrified at my Xrays as it showed it so clearly.
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When I decide to one day stop blogging there will be a goodbye post, but if anything happens to me before then, my daughter, "no-one", will let you all know. She will access my blog and put something up there.
ReplyDeleteOh good River, there are a few that I so very much enjoyed and they disappeared without a trace. Even a "gone fishing in the great beyond" would be helpful, LOL.
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Phew! That is a relief. These are manageable matters and you will be as good as new soon.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your positive vibes there Ramana, I know you struggle with your COPD. But we are alive.
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Answers and relief and new worry with the help to manage it. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteMake others happy with your smile and goodness. You have a lot of knowledge to impart.
Hugs!
Thank you GP, not worried, oddly enough. Maybe I am far too cocky and will drop like a fly.
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When I was taking Amlodipine for blood pressure, I experienced extreme pain and swelling in my feet, legs and knees. It was so bad I had to use a walker to get around. Then my doctor replaced the Amlodipine with Telmisartan. No swelling or pain anymore. You might want to discuss this with your doctor if you are still taking Amlodipine.
ReplyDeleteI think it is the "sartan" strain of drugs that I can't tolerate but I will take your suggestion to doc on Friday and see what he says. I am on a truckload of drugs and they have to watch for intereactions.
DeleteThank you.
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I'm taking Amlodipine with no trouble at all apart from a little heartburn which I now take Nexium for and now have no trouble.
DeleteGlad you went to see the Dr. Knowing for me is better than wondering what is wrong.
ReplyDeleteI so agree Judi and often the fear can be the worst, we are so ready to Dr. Google everything and lie prone on our deathbeds.
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Wouldn't it be a good idea to have a second opinion?
DeleteI mean, I had all the same symptoms and diagnosis, but they told me nothing to worry about at this age. Everyone by this age has different heart performance than a 25 or even a 50 yr old.
I went to a team of cardiologists at a world class heart centre. It's been two years now and I'm still doing everything I always do. I really can't imagine a doctor telling a patient this "die in your sleep" scenario. How awful. It seems such a shame that you've virtually cancelled your life based on what might be nothing? EMMA
Please respect other people's boundaries and decisions Emma. I find your comments most unhelpful. We are all different and react differently and I have a mutually respectful and dedicated doctor who is extremely knowledgeable and honest.
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It was honest feedback from someone who is going through the same thing.
DeleteWhen I seek feedback I will ask for it as I have in the past. our feedback is unsolicited and judgmental and totally lacking in any kind of empathy. And of course anonymous, I just caught that. I will not engage with anonymous posters. Cowards.
DeleteOh dear, what a wake up call! I know how much we want to carry on as if we are just having a little hiccup, nothing to worry about really, when actually it is such a serious matter! I don't know which is worse: having to go to the doctor or being reprimanded by friends for not going.
ReplyDeleteExactly Annie, we are caught so suddenly in the cross hairs of downfall and health challenges. I am feeling much better today so onward, I think my lungs are actually working now!
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Oh, I like this doctor, or team, or whatever the they are called. They also told me that with good management, I am good to go. I think I must visit the doctor far too often, but what a small price to pay. I hope you are as committed as these professionals seem to be. They do like to keep us happy and functioning, I've learned.
ReplyDeleteYes and I also like the analysis of where we are in our lives, our biological clock - it's all about quality of life now and my "numbers" are not too dire for my age he says:). I am bringing joy to myself, I hope and spreading it around also, I hope!
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Sorry I'm late here. I did visit and thought I commented, I seem to lose a lot of comments these days, maybe something to do with my phone.
ReplyDeleteAge is a thief and it's no fun but you have a great attitude. I hope there is lots of joy still on the cards for you
I believe so Kylie, I am looking positively on all I am able to do and am sometimes astonished at the end of the day.
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Just now catching up and I'm glad to get the update. I hate when bloggers disappear without warning, too! Great that you had a good team and I envy Canada's universal healthcare.
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