MAYO I Go Home Now?

July 26 - August 4, 2009.

Got home from my vacation in West Virginia the night of July 26. Came home and promptly ended up in the emergency room.

An hour later, I was flown down to Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix, AZ. (Don't let the city name of 'Scottsdale' fool you - IT'S PHOENIX!)

Most of you know this story, so I won't bore you with stats...

Diagnosis: Systolic Congestive Heart Failure aggravated by Cardiomyopathy.

Layman's Term: My heart's SHOT TO HELL.

Thank you chemotherapy drugs...lessee...do I wanna die from cancer NOW or a few years down the road with a crap-assed heart disease??? 50% (HALF!!!!) of all CHF patients die within 5 years of their diagnosis. I REFUSE TO BE A STATISTIC.

The doxirubicin used in my AVBD cocktail in 2003 is what has depleted my heart. I am on 4 additional medications now (bringing my day's pill popping total to 11) and see an awesome cardiologist in Phx every month. (And a "bruthah" to boot!!!)

Woo freakin hoo. I am 36 years old and my heart is failing. WHO did I piss off to deserve THIS!? >:-<

This has been one of the hardest things in my life that I've ever had to deal with. I don't think I am still fully mentally adjusted to all of this, but what can I do? It is what it is. For all intents and purposes I am disabled now. I have a pending disability case with the Social Security Administration. I am still going to finish school though, because I am holding out in hopes that maybe some day, medicine can figure out how to fix this. If that's the case, I'ma be FIRST in line, I don't care whose toes I have to step on to get there.

I have to sleep with an oxygen machine now - and a CPAP when I can stand the feeling of a tribble sitting on my face. I can't walk more than 200 ft w/o stopping to rest. That really cuts in on my shopping trips, lemme tell you what. I have to eat a low sodium, low fat, diabetic diet (and yes, that does consist of lettuce, black coffee and nothing else!!!) but the upside off that is that since Christmas of 2008, I have lost 50 POUNDS and have KEPT IT OFF! Go me! Yay! I get SO TIRED of doctors preaching weight loss as a "cure" for everything...honestly, they ain't telling me nothing I don't already know! So save it for an idiot savant that has no clue!!!

In the future, I will have to have cardiac catherization annually to measure my heart's worth. They stick a Swan Line in a slit in my jugular and run it down into my heart to measure ejection fraction, pump volume and all that fancy stuff that I now know more about than I ever dreamed I'd have to know!

And in addition to the heart stuff, there were all kinds of lung problems too. My pulmonary health is fair-to-poor anyhow from all of the scar tissue on my lungs from past pulmonary plural effusions and all of the steps taken to rectify those illnesses. At Mayo, I had a collapsed upper lobe of my lung because all of the fluid backed up in my lungs was crushing them. The day I had the thorocentesis - I thought I was going to die. I have a nice pulmonologist @ Mayo Clinic and he keeps an eye on me. In addition to the CHF, I also have restrictive lung disease. Fun stuff, lemmee tell ya.

So, that's the gist of that and one of the main reasons WHY I haven't been on here in forever. Aside from my old computer crashing in August 2009.

Ob-la-da, Ob-la-di, Life goes oooonnnnn.....