So where have I been for days? Well “coughing my heart up” is the closest descriptor I can come up with. It’s been so hard to keep breathing I’ve not been interested in doing anything other than sitting quietly and hoping for the best. Maybe I should explain.
After the surgery, everything was going well. I’d had a pain in my side for a while but that went. Then, as I wrote in an earlier post, I was rushed into hospital on 6th December with what was suspected to be a minor heart attack but turned out to be blood clots in my lungs, which to be honest wasn’t a lot better. Anyway, a few days back I managed to get an appointment with my cardiologist who decided there was no question that the clots were caused by the surgery and not, as I’d assumed, from the damage to my knee as I’d thought.
So, I’m now approaching Christmas, unable to breathe properly, and unable to clean the house or tidy up easily. I hope nobody but family comes to visit because the place is currently in a highly embarrassing state. Actually, I suppose it won’t make a whole heap of difference because I’m pretty much broke anyway since I’ve not been able to go out doing “DoorDash” deliveries as did last year to earn some spending money. What with the surgery, the hospital stay, and the breathing problems, I thought it safer to stay home and mutter my irritation to myself – and my long-suffering daughter.
So where do we go from here? Well to start with, nothing before Christmas. Afterwards, it’ll be back to the cardiologist for yet another ECG, and if that goes well, a referral to a respiratory specialist (a specialism which I understand is actually named “Pulmonologist” which is correct, but sounds totally wrong to me!). I’ve no idea what, if anything he, she, or they can do to help, other than tell me to keep breathing and keep taking the Eliquis blood thinners twice a day.
It’s really depressing to feel like this. Despite my ups and downs, I’ve led a fairly ‘charmed’ life physically, and it feels like all my past corporeal sins are beginning to come back and haunt me! To be a little clearer, it seems a pulmonary embolism (colloquially PE) can take months or even *years* to recover from properly so at my age… this could be my physical condition for a long time to come. This prognosis does not fill me with joy in any way, shape or form.
Oh yes, I almost forgot. The main purpose of the blog is to keep a record of weight loss. Well, unfortunately, it’d been a really odd time. My weight went up from 135.90 kilos to 137.10 kilos, more than it had been over a week before! I suppose this was a result of eating too much, or retaining water or… well almost anything really. Today it seems the stall (if you could call it that) has broken and my weight has begun to drop again. It’s only at 136.50 kilos, so still higher than it should be, but at least it’s moving in the right direction again.
The Eclectic Interweb 