I am doing better than what I was. I am still really tired, and I still have some nausa. I am able to do a little more than what I was just a few weeks ago. I am still having trouble keeping up my energy but I'm sure that it will come back soon. If I could just get my energy level back up than I will be like a new person. Thank you to everyone that has been helping and calling. I go to Duke on Feb. 26th, I will let everyone know what Dr. Rodgers says. For those that don't know Dr. Rodges, he is the transplant cardiologest at Duke. The best transplant doctor that I may add!

Well, I woke up in the wee hours on Sunday not feeling like myself. I could see two of everything, I had the worst headach of my life, and I had really bad nausa. About fifteen before 5 Brad called the ambulance to come and take me to the hospital. I layed in the bed with a towel over my eyes for 6 hours before a doctor saw me. I could not stand to take the towel off of my head because that ment I was going to see two of everything. The doc ordered a CAT scan and a bunch of bloodwork and found that I had a mini stroke (TIA). Scary!!! The next day I had more bloodwork and another CAT scan with contrast. I guess it did not tell them anything different so they ordered a scan of my throat and found a blood clot. The clot is still there, so I can't do any jumping. They are going to let the blood thinners do there job and desolve the clot. The next day they did a TEE. This they put me asleep and put a camera down my throat so they could look at my heart. They found that I have a birth defect in my heart. It only took three years for someone to find it. I have an aterial ablation (I think that is what it's called, Brad knows) were extra blood comes out of my heart and it's easy for it to develop blood clots, so this could be the reason for the heart attack that I had. A doctor once told me that if seemed like it was from a blood clot from the scaring on the heart. I had my pt/inr (blood thinner level) checked today and it's a 2.34. Since I have thrown a clot in the past week they want my level to be around a 2.5-3. We are almost there. Thank you to all the doctors especially Dr. Forrester, and to those that came and saw me in the hospital. Thank you! If I call you and talk to you and say the same things just bare with me, I will be back to normal in no time!

The visit could have not gone any smother than what it did. I was in the room for 45 min. The two techs were calling out a different numbers and messuring my heart waves as they changed the numbers on the device. It was really cool sitting there and watching one tech do an echo while the other one was programing my device. They said that they improved my cardic output, not by much but every little bit helps! Since it has been a couple of days I can tell a difference in the new programing, because I have a little bit more engery than what I did. Of course some of it is because I am recovered from the surgeries. I am still a little slow on some things but I can stand and walk a little bit further.

I went to the surgeon today and he told me that everything was looking good! He said my incisions are healing nicely and I don't have to go and see him anymore!

I'm sorry that I have not kept the website up to date. The surgery and recovery have been very hard on me. After I got out of the hospital I was in so much pain. I could feel where they did the tunneling to place the third wire and the spot where they had the chest tube. I was not able to get out of the bed by myself. Bradley and his mom had to help me get out of the bed for at least a week. Every time that I moved it was so painful. For two weeks I was not able to eat sold food because I was so sick to my stomach and the doctors had given me some anti nausa pills and it turned out that I was allgeric to them and my neck swelled up. So, that was more pain added to the pain I was already in. Since I was not able to eat much I gained a lot of water weight. Right now they doubled my lasix so I could lose the weight and I have lost 18 pounds. My stomach was big and painful. After a couple of weeks my blood pressure was staying at a normal range so the doctors started me back on some of my meds. They had to stop some of them while my blood pressure was so low because the meds could lower the blood pressure even more. I went last week to get my blood taken to check by blood thinner numbers and it was at a 6.4 when it should not be more than a 3. So, I had to stop taking my blood thinner for a few days so the number would go down. Since it was so high I had a lot of nose bleeds but now the number is down to a 1.7, so on Monday I will be restarting that medication too.

 

If you had called and I did not answer please understand that I was going through a lot and there were times that I needed some rest due to the fact that I had no energy. The surgery and the recovery was very rough on me and those around me. I want to thank everyone that came to the hospital to visit me and thank everyone that is helping me raise money for the transplant. We are at $17,000. I want to thank Dr. Forrester for listening is me and helping me through the whole process, I know that it was rough for you too. Thank you Ma (Brad's Mom) for staying with us the last month. You have helped make things easier and Dot (my dog) likes the walks that you take her on. Thank you so much and I love you. Bradley I Love you and I could not have gone through this without you. Thank you!

 

I will be going back to the doctor on Monday (Feb. 4th) to get an echo done and they will be programing my CRT-D based on the echo. They want the CRT-D to help my heart pump to the full advantage. I will write back and let you know how it went.

Wow it has been a while. I hope Bradley has kept everyone up to speed. If not forgive him he has been very busy working and taking care of me. Let us begin where we left off. On Jan. 7th I went into the hospital for an outpatient surgery to change my AICD to a CRT-D. That is a more advanced device that is made just for heart failure patients. The procedure was going to take 2 to 4 hours and I would spend the night in the hospital for one night for observation. I was greeted after the operation by Bradley telling me there had been a complication. The 3rd wire had not been placed. My vein was too twisted to allow entry. They made three attempts but were unsuccessful, so they stapled me up. PLAN B Plan B had a scarey step to it.....DEFLATING MY LUNG. This was the plan for Tuesday, the day I was suppose to be going home. They made a small opening between two ribs and incerted a small tube into the side of my lung. Then they did a controlled collasp and started tunnelling through my muscle. When they reached my heart they screwed the 3rd wire into the back of it and tunnelled up to the device which is located just under my collar bone. They then took the staples out of the opening to the device and attached the wire to the new CRT-D. I woke up later that day to more pain than I could have ever imagined. I was on extremely limited pain killers due to the fact that my blood pressure was hovering around 70/40. This remained the same over the next 2 days. And the most distrubing thing was there was a tube coming out of my chest. It had to stay in for 3 days to remove fluid from my lung after it had been reinflated. I also had problems with my kidneys, they did not want to work as well as they should. I was released on Saturday, 5 days after I went in. I'm going to take a break now. I will write about the last 2 weeks later, after a little nap. Thank you all that visited and sent your love via Bradley.