For any who recall, some time ago I mentioned being diagnosed with a heart condition. My absence since then has been primarily because of that. I kept feeling worse and worse while my cardiologist kept saying, "You're fine, you're fine! This is normal! I'll see you in a month!" Well, I finally decided to be rude and basically told him one day, "I'm coming in today, you WILL make room for me." Surprisingly, it worked! My wife and I talked with him about all my symptoms at that point and he realized I wasn't fine. He did another echocardiogram to find that my EF (ejection fraction) was only 10%. Basically, my heart was only pumping 10% of the blood it was supposed to.
He didn't rush me to the hospital that day, but did set me up an appointment with one of Piedmont Hospital's heart failure specialists ASAP. At that appointment, the doctor literally said that everything the cardiologist had been saying and doing for me was wrong. I was not dehydrated but fluid overloaded, I didn't need the heart meds I'd been on because they were actually making things worse based on various symptoms...etc. They admitted me to the hospital and put me on some diuretics to get the excess fluid off me.
Unfortunately it was too late for that. Because I'd been retaining fluid in my gut, I'd been flooding my kidneys and liver, and they basically shut down. I was quickly admitted into ICU and placed on lots of different meds and mechanics for observation. I don't remember much of this, but my wife said she was terrified for a while that this was the end of me.
Thankfully, I made a sudden turn for the better, and my kidneys and liver began functioning again. I spent a while longer in the ICU and the hospital, slowly but surely making improvements, and am finally back home again! I'm still on a home IV for one medication that is only available as an IV, and I have an external defibrillator vest monitoring my heart. I'm on several pill meds for my heart, and there are a few others they want to slowly add as they hopefully wean me off the IV med. That will just take time. I'll be checking in at least once a week with the heart failure doctors at Piedmont where they'll be monitoring how I do and deciding what next steps to take based on what they see. If they see improvement, we add pill meds and remove the IV, and I may or may not need an internal defibrillator implanted. If they don't see enough improvement, they'll be encouraging a heart transplant. I still have a looooong way to go, so your thoughts/prayers are still appreciated...we really don't wanna go the transplant route.
And you may remember that this all is amidst my wife bearing our first child. Things are still going well in that part of our lives, and we recently found out we're having a little boy! All the more reason I need to get better...if he's anything like I was we'll be chasing him all over! ;-P