So... when last I posted, we were in the midst of trying to figure out why Michael was getting these spells of feeling terrible, plus trying to get him well enough for the hernia/stomach surgery that was scheduled for the end of July.
Leaving out a good part of the middle bit... two weeks ago, he went in for his annual echocardiogram, and they discovered that his heart was pumping at 15% of capacity (normal, FYI, is about 60%). They immediately put him in the hospital and diagnosed congestive heart failure. And we've spent the last two weeks in the hospital... I say, "we" because I stayed with him the whole time.
The good news... I guess, if there is really any great news here... is that they put him on a whole lot of drugs, which he seems to be relatively ok with, and that the prognosis seems... well, ok I guess. He is relatively young. He's lost a lot of weight (and they said, for whatever it's worth, that if he had not, he would probably be dead by now). CHF is rarely completely reversable, but it can get a lot, lot better. And this explains a lot of the weird symptoms that he's had for so long, although no one has at all explained why it has been so cyclical. There's a lot of hope that maybe he'll really start feeling better.
The not-so-good-news... well, the condition in general. And of course, the surgery has to be postponed for some time until cardio clears him. And he's on a ton of medications which slow his heart rate (good) but lower his blood pressure (bad, because it wasn't high to begin with, and very low blood pressure makes you dizzy and confused). I don't know... it's hard to get any perspective about this right now.
I am worried and scared and overloaded and exhausted... so is he. But his weight is the lowest ever (378), and we are home, and we can rebuild.
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Nina, I don't know if it helps you to know but I think of you both often. I can't express properly what I want to say but I hope and pray that you come through this difficult stage soon. You and Michael deserve it and you can get through this. It stinks that, having made so much progress, Michael is hit with these health battles. You might feel alone at times but you have an army of supporters wishing you both well. I'm sure of it.
It does help. Part of the problem with all of this is that I just feel so alone with it. I don't have much family, and I'm not really close to most of them... Michael has no family, really... and so it's just us, and a few friends, most of whom we've lost track of in all the chaos. It's hard not to feel, well, pretty alone and desolate a lot of the time, and harder still to know what to do about it.
But somehow this all will get better. It just has to.
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