One small stumble for man .....

In May I struggled with a balance of adequate blood pressure and retention of fluids. At one point, the UW Hospital may have been a little aggressive about the fluid retention as I came out close to 14 pounds less than when I went in. This occurred with an adjustment with my diuretic, plus pulling with a long syringe 3 1/2 pounds of fluid from near my lungs. As I was discharged from the hospital and got home, I was light headed. Once at home, without thinking, I started up the 13 steps from the garage to the first floor of our home. Twice on the way up, I needed to pause to allow my head to stop spinning. Finally at the top of the stairs, I paused to catch my breath and then go on to the bedroom where I would lay down. From the time I left the top of the stairs, I can not remember what happened. Rose found me on the top of the bed laying on my back, my hands clinched, I had very shallow breathing and I had turned blue. I apparently walked into something as I had this great shiner across my right eye. Over the next few hours, the neighbors, Rose, EMT's and the doctors at the local hospital had a chance to check me out. The following day, I was transported by ambulance back to the UW Hospital where I under went further examination and was fitted with a heart defibrillator. It is uncertain if my black out was caused by an irregular heart beat or from a lack of blood to the brain because of a low blood pressure. To be safe, the hospital placed the defibrillator within my chest cavity. I now have this hockey puck shape and size device under the skin on my left side. It will monitor any irregular heart beats and will send a shock to get the heart back to a normal rhythm again. I am not using a photo of me after I blacked out as I had two black eyes plus some hemorrahaging around the white part of the left eye. I just looked to scary. Here is a photo that was taken at the end of June, six weeks after the accident. I look better with only a slight black-eye. (This photo can be compared to the one at the start of this blog, taken at Camp Muir from September of 2008 to show how much weight I have lost due to this illness).