Sunday, June 29, 14 HEART GOALS
Toying with my CHF has just started to be intellectually interesting to me. Friday last, Dr. X really helped make sense of CHF for me when saying, “We want to keep you a little bit dehydrated.” Since a child, 8-glasses of water a day has been drilled into me, and the new survival show always emphasis the importance of water for human life; but no longer. 2-liters of Pepsi is the per day max of liquid doctors said I could safely consume. I find that they are wrong. My heart can no longer process 2 liters of liquid in 24 hours because my heart’s ejection fraction, EF, is down to 45 from the norm of 60 per cent due to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. My heart does not eject enough blood to the rest of my body for my kidneys to process liquid waste in the normal manner and the waste backs up into any cavity available in the rest of my body. Doctors attempt to fix this back up problem by having me ingest the diuretic called Lasix which acts directly on the kidneys to make them strain more to process the waste such that I urinate it out. Unfortunately, this direct action strains and damages the kidneys.
Two years ago my EF was down as low as 35%, but 3 drugs have helped get it back up to the current 45%. The central part of the problem is that my heart’s left ventricle’s left side is over grown, or hypertrophic, and take up space where blood is supposed to be so that it can be ejected into the rest of the body. But this hypertrophy is complicated by atrial arrhythmias that shoot random electrical signals through my heart. Doctors have thrice tried to kill these arrhythmias by burning, ablating, their point of origin, but this has not worked. Doctors tell me that I have 3 additional heart problems that I am unable to describe.
Knowing the dehydration goals expressed by Dr. X is helpful to me because it tells me that, in my case, dehydration is OK. I will use it by starving myself of liquid until I determine just how much liquid my heart can process in 24 hours with and without Lasix. With my last ER visit I determined that my heart cannot process 2 liters of liquid in 24 hours even with the aid of Lasix. During the last 24 I limited myself to about one mouthful of liquid per hour and noted that my weight gain was reversed by this morning. I went from 170 lbs. yesterday afternoon to 167.5 on waking this morning.
My dry weight goal is 155 lbs the liquid retention has disguised my weight such that I’ve thought myself overeating for the last number of years. I weighed 180 lbs. when I first decided on that goal and that is near the time I noticed what I then thought was a newly discovered male-cycle of water retention. Now I know that was the start of my CHF, in about 2010.
My long-term health goal, however, is a heart transplant with one made via regenerative technology with my own stem cells. I began researching this in about 2011 and had an appointment with Harvard’s Dr. X for July 2014 that I must miss due to both emergency surgery this summer and possible payment obstacles. I projected such a heart might be available in 2026 when I will likely be too old a candidate for it. Of course, perhaps I’ll be so aged that I will be perfect as a guinea pig for so experimental a device. The heart is a complicated machine. An ABC News Special on thoracic surgeon, Paolo Macchiarini, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Regenerative Medicine at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm (Sweden), showed that many of his windpipe transplant patients die. A windpipe seems much, much less complex than a heart.
I think I can eliminate my need for Lasix. Today I swallowed my normal 40 mg at 5 a.m. and peed a fair amount. At 11 I took 20 mg more and peed more. But, I sat in the sun and ate a pint of ice cream—which is liquid because it melts to liquid--before hitting the gym at 3 p.m. Then I wanted to but no pee came out! I’m supposed to take 20 mg more but have decided not to and give my kidneys a break since I was empty of pee even at 6 p.m. after consuming about 1.5 liters of liquid—including the ice cream!
Besides that I’ve eaten only an orange and a half link of sausage with veggie garnish in a half pita bread and today. I just weighed in at 167.5 lbs. Tomorrow morning I will not take Lasix and see if my drastic liquid limiting still reduces my weight. However, I have a lobster dinner appointment with Virginia, my editor, tomorrow night.
Right now, at 8 p.m., my belly is a bit extended. Around noon my weight was 165.5, so the ice cream increased it 2 lbs. My heart is processing that ice cream at this minute with out the help of Lasix. I want a beer but will not have one until after that ice cream has run through my kidneys and come out as urine. If tomorrow morn my Lasixless weight is lower, I will consider this initial experiment a success.
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Toying with my CHF has just started to be intellectually interesting to me. Friday last, Dr. X really helped make sense of CHF for me when saying, “We want to keep you a little bit dehydrated.” Since a child, 8-glasses of water a day has been drilled into me, and the new survival show always emphasis the importance of water for human life; but no longer. 2-liters of Pepsi is the per day max of liquid doctors said I could safely consume. I find that they are wrong. My heart can no longer process 2 liters of liquid in 24 hours because my heart’s ejection fraction, EF, is down to 45 from the norm of 60 per cent due to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. My heart does not eject enough blood to the rest of my body for my kidneys to process liquid waste in the normal manner and the waste backs up into any cavity available in the rest of my body. Doctors attempt to fix this back up problem by having me ingest the diuretic called Lasix which acts directly on the kidneys to make them strain more to process the waste such that I urinate it out. Unfortunately, this direct action strains and damages the kidneys.
Two years ago my EF was down as low as 35%, but 3 drugs have helped get it back up to the current 45%. The central part of the problem is that my heart’s left ventricle’s left side is over grown, or hypertrophic, and take up space where blood is supposed to be so that it can be ejected into the rest of the body. But this hypertrophy is complicated by atrial arrhythmias that shoot random electrical signals through my heart. Doctors have thrice tried to kill these arrhythmias by burning, ablating, their point of origin, but this has not worked. Doctors tell me that I have 3 additional heart problems that I am unable to describe.
Knowing the dehydration goals expressed by Dr. X is helpful to me because it tells me that, in my case, dehydration is OK. I will use it by starving myself of liquid until I determine just how much liquid my heart can process in 24 hours with and without Lasix. With my last ER visit I determined that my heart cannot process 2 liters of liquid in 24 hours even with the aid of Lasix. During the last 24 I limited myself to about one mouthful of liquid per hour and noted that my weight gain was reversed by this morning. I went from 170 lbs. yesterday afternoon to 167.5 on waking this morning.
My dry weight goal is 155 lbs the liquid retention has disguised my weight such that I’ve thought myself overeating for the last number of years. I weighed 180 lbs. when I first decided on that goal and that is near the time I noticed what I then thought was a newly discovered male-cycle of water retention. Now I know that was the start of my CHF, in about 2010.
My long-term health goal, however, is a heart transplant with one made via regenerative technology with my own stem cells. I began researching this in about 2011 and had an appointment with Harvard’s Dr. X for July 2014 that I must miss due to both emergency surgery this summer and possible payment obstacles. I projected such a heart might be available in 2026 when I will likely be too old a candidate for it. Of course, perhaps I’ll be so aged that I will be perfect as a guinea pig for so experimental a device. The heart is a complicated machine. An ABC News Special on thoracic surgeon, Paolo Macchiarini, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Regenerative Medicine at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm (Sweden), showed that many of his windpipe transplant patients die. A windpipe seems much, much less complex than a heart.
I think I can eliminate my need for Lasix. Today I swallowed my normal 40 mg at 5 a.m. and peed a fair amount. At 11 I took 20 mg more and peed more. But, I sat in the sun and ate a pint of ice cream—which is liquid because it melts to liquid--before hitting the gym at 3 p.m. Then I wanted to but no pee came out! I’m supposed to take 20 mg more but have decided not to and give my kidneys a break since I was empty of pee even at 6 p.m. after consuming about 1.5 liters of liquid—including the ice cream!
Besides that I’ve eaten only an orange and a half link of sausage with veggie garnish in a half pita bread and today. I just weighed in at 167.5 lbs. Tomorrow morning I will not take Lasix and see if my drastic liquid limiting still reduces my weight. However, I have a lobster dinner appointment with Virginia, my editor, tomorrow night.
Right now, at 8 p.m., my belly is a bit extended. Around noon my weight was 165.5, so the ice cream increased it 2 lbs. My heart is processing that ice cream at this minute with out the help of Lasix. I want a beer but will not have one until after that ice cream has run through my kidneys and come out as urine. If tomorrow morn my Lasixless weight is lower, I will consider this initial experiment a success.
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