Back From The Brink

So this increase in my Ejection Fraction from 20% in August 2007 to 30% in November 2007 is an interesting exercise in my thought process. Good news to be sure, but the up, down, up thing is sometimes a challenge.

I understand it is not unique to chronic, dangerous diseases. We read every day about Cancer patients going into remission and then having the Cancer come back. Although this is not really the same, the never knowing if, is something all patients like us must learn to deal with.

So I am grateful to be sure. I had begun thinking about the heart transplant that seemed inevitable (if I was so lucky) in the near future, and was trying to take care of the rest of the body so I could hopefully still qualify. My doctor and I had discussed the timing and he had some parameters in mind to tell him when it was time to do it.

I had not told very many folks how bad I was, of course, that does no good and people just get freaked out anyway. I could see myself shrinking before my eyes at that time, though, and my doctor said he did not know what to do.

Turns out he figured something out, because almost immediately after he experimented on me with the Ranexa, I started to feel better. I am grateful for his innovation, because Ranexa is not indicated for CHF patients, but his research had led to conclude it might help one of my issues.

Now it is time to rebuild some of what was lost in the drop from October 2006 to August 2007, when I dropped from 35% EF to 20% EF.

Hospital Visit

So I got home from a business trip to Germany a couple of weeks ago and I woke up the next day with a fever and flu like symptoms. It was the weekend so I decided to wait it out and on Monday I started to feel better.

On Tuesday I woke up feeling worse, with fever, aches, I could not keep anything down, and also stomach pain. Long story short, I ended up going to the emergency room at 5 AM because the pain was so bad and I was starting to get shortness of breath.

They put me on oxygen and IV’s to replace fluids and did a bunch of tests for the fever, stomach pain, and also my heart. I was too out of it most of the time, but it appears they were very thorough.

Good news is they said it was a virus, with a secondary infection for which they gave me antibiotics. It was a big scare, of course, but some really good news is they did an Echocardiogram on my heart and ran my BNP.

The echo showed my BNP had increased from 208 in August to 256, which is not a big deal, and my EF had improved to 30%. 30% is not great as you know, but I was dropping like a rock for several months there so any improvement is a win from that perspective.