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Pay Attention to Your Body Fellas : Long Read

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    Pay Attention to Your Body Fellas : Long Read

    Thought I would share with ya’ll the little adventure I’ve been on and maybe it will keep someone from dealing with the same thing.

    I’ve always considered myself to be fairly indestructible when it comes to health issues. I’ve never been sick, used to run marathons, and even did a couple Ironman competitions back in the day. I stayed pretty active even when I got of the service 18yrs ago but as kids were born and work got more intense I slacked off a bit.

    I noticed about 10yr ago that I just wasn’t feeling as well as I used to. I even noticed a few times that it felt like my heart didn’t beat in a regular rhythm but I didn’t think anything about. Over the years though I still noticed that I just wasn’t the same. Thought it might be testosterone so I started doing replacement therapy about 4yrs ago.

    The TRT didn’t really seem to change anything and the worse I felt the more I drank. The more I drank the worse I felt. I was drinking 6-8 tall boys a night and it wasn’t anything to knock out 2 30 packs of ‘stones at the lease on a 3 day weekend.

    Fast forward to about 2 months ago. I realized something needed to change. When I was 35 I walked around at about 170lbs. I was now 5-9 and 210. I decided to lay off the beer and start exercising and working out again. I jumped full speed into and figured in a couple weeks I would start feeling better.

    A month passes and if anything, I feel worse. I haven’t lost a pound and my 5 1/2 mile walk gets harder every day instead of easier. At the 6 week point I can barely breathe when I get in bed and I’m up to 215lbs and my belly is so swollen it was like I had a beach ball in it.

    The night of Thursday Aug 12 I thought I was going to suffocate in bed. I couldn’t breathe and nothing I did seemed to make it better. Most of the pressure was under the upper RH side of my abdomen and I convinced myself that there was something wrong with my gallbladder. Most of the symptoms matched using my Google-Foo skills. I told myself that if I didn’t feel better in the morning I was going to the emergency clinic.

    Friday the 13th….no change so I head to Hospitality ER. They are slammed with Covid but I get seen in about an hour. Tell them/show them the swelling in my belly and they do a CT scan of my abdomen. It’s full of fluid. One of the doctors said it looked like there was fluid in the lower part of my lungs but the image didn’t show much since they were trying to see my abdomen. They did a CT of my chest and my heart and lungs are completely surrounded with fluid.

    They suspect there may be something wrong with my heart so they order a BNP test. Results should be less than 100 for a 45yr old man and mine is 700……heart failure. They pump me full of Lasix to start getting fluid off and tell me I need to se a cardiologist pronto.

    I’m lucky that one of my best friends is the Director of the cardiac center at the local hospital. He gets me in 2 days later morning and does an EKG. I’m in Atrial Fibrillation. My resting heart rate is 141 and the rhythm is so screwed up they can’t read my blood pressure.

    They schedule me for a cardioversion 3 days later. This is where they shock your heart to put it back in rhythm. The electro cardiologist tries it 3 times and it won’t take.

    Next step….cardiac catheterization to attempt to see what is going on. Again, my buddy is on point and gets me scheduled for 5 days later. Results……a kick in the nutz. Dilated Cardiomyopathy. My heart is ~70% enlarged and it’s functioning at 10-15%. The results are so bad they check it twice because they haven’t seen results like that in a 45yr old man.

    The doctor who did the procedure told me my 5-6yrs of beer drinking has destroyed my heart. You die with 10-15% function. Basically told me I need a transplant and he doesn’t refer patients who have substance abuse problems. He considers drinking every day substance abuse. My wife and I leave the hospital in a state of shock. This was this past Wednesday.

    I have a follow up 2 days later on Friday with my normal cardiologist. He tells me I have had afib for a long long time which has significantly weakened my heart. The drinking didn’t help it but the exercising and working out pushed it over the edge.

    That brings us today. I’m having to wear a “life vest” that constantly monitors my heart and will shock me if it quits. I am have cardiac ablation done Thursday morning where they will attempt to burn the nerves in my heart to stop the afib. If they can stop the afib then there is a chance my heart can heal and strengthen to the point I can live a normal life.

    If the ablation procedure doesn’t work I will have to have a pacemaker/defibrillator implanted to get the rhythm correct. If the correct rhythm can be maintained there is a possibility that my heart will strengthen. They are saying I need to be at a minimum of 35% function. If we can’t get it up to that level the next step will be a heart transplant due to my age.

    I’m going next week to see an advanced heart failure cardiologist at Medical City in Dallas next week where we’ll start having initial talks about a transplant.

    So fellas….if you think something isn’t right with your body go get checked out sooner rather than later. If I would have gotten checked out 10 years ago (or even 5) I wouldn’t be in this boat. I’m fortunate that I have close friends at both the local Cardic Center and at Medical City. I’ve got a couple million in life insurance so the wife and kid will be covered no matter what happens. I have some great friends that care about me and I’ve realized that as much as I **** and moan about my wife she is actually a pretty good woman and loves me.

    I’ll tell ya, I never considered the possibility of being dead before 50 though outside of a car wreck or something. Hopefully things work out in my favor and I’ll get to stick around a while longer though.

    To put a positive spin on it…I weighed 216lbs on Aug 13th and I weighed 165 Friday morning so this is a great way to take some pounds off. [emoji1787]


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    Last edited by 175gr7.62; 08-29-2021, 11:06 AM.

    #2
    Prayers for you. I’m 43 so thank you for writing this.

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      #3
      That is one heck of a reminder right there! Praying that your heart strengthens to a livable state…

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        #4
        Thanks for the reminder. I never go see a primary care physician or anything. This is enough to make me think twice about it.

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          #5
          Wow man, Prayers out that the least invasive procedure will be the solution.

          Thanks for the write up, as I entered my own cardiac issues as well at the ripe old age of 45.

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            #6
            I’m a Xray tech in a EP lab here in Lubbock. We work on patients that after they have the procedures you’re in line for tell us at follow ups they haven’t felt this good in years! If you go the device route you might be getting a Bi-V implant. We have had patients that couldn’t walk thru their house get one of these and tell us about how they are walking thru the neighborhood and feel the best they have in years. I hope this is the case for you. Don’t give up, keep fighting. You didn’t get this way overnight so don’t get discouraged when it seems like nothing is working. Good luck!

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              #7
              Man that’s crazy! Very scary stuff. I hope and pray everything goes in your favor and can continue living a normal life.


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                #8
                Prayers for you and thanks for sharing. We all need to heed your advice.


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                  #9
                  Dang man that is horrible. Thank you so much for sharing your story. I will pray for you bud.


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                    #10
                    Thats the one of the reasons i have had a cardioligist since my late 30's. Afib is hereditary, everyone in my family has it.


                    Intially they find out same way you did. Thus far, eveyone of them have had plenty of ablations etc. And all have pacemaker defibrillators now.

                    But after a scary diagnosis such as yours all their functions improved.

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                      #11
                      Prayers for you sir. For what it’s worth I had a coworker 20 years ago go through the Cardiac Ablation treatment and it fixed everything. He’s going strong today. God bless you for sharing your story sir.

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                        #12
                        Prayers for you

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                          #13
                          Prayers up!!!!!

                          Bisch


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                            #14
                            Prayers sent.

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                              #15
                              Good luck Sir, I hope you get this straightened out. You’re too young to kick out, you got lots more living to do. I’ve had a pacemaker since 2008, in fact I’m on my second one. They ain’t a big deal, but all mine does is make sure my heart rate doesn’t fall below 60 BPM. It doesn’t do anything for the Afib. I had a light heart attack around the first week of June and have lost 35/40 lbs. since then. Not the ideal way to take it off but it needed to go. I’m 74 though, so that’s to be expected at my age. Again, good luck !

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