Congestive Heart Failure.

Jan 18, 2010

I've always tried to post on my blog the different things I've gone through before and after surgery.  I think this is a very important chapter of my journey to post.  If this helps one person avoid what I've gone through this past weekend its well worth my time posting it.

My lap band has been tightened periodically through my journey.  My last two were way too tight.  I should have had them taken fluid out sooner but I had a wedding to go to and I wanted to look good.  That was all I thought about.  I let them tighten it again before the wedding even though I knew the previous one was too tight.

With two consecutive tightenings this is what happened.  Yes I lost weight.  I lost it at a rapid rate.  The concenquences of my vanity came at a high cost.  Over the past several months I delevoped a horrible case of acid reflux.  When I would try to sleep it would actually come up into my mouth and cause me to vomit.  My throat got torn up and it even changed my voice.  It also caused me to throw up all the time.  I barely kept any food down.  The weight rapidly came off.  People started to tell me I looked gaunt.  I knew it was going too far.  I saw my regular dr and he said I looked ok but not to lose more weight.

My weight was 119 (The extreme low of healthy for my height) when I saw the lap band dr last Friday.  She said I looked ok.  I told her I wanted fluid removed from my band because I lost too much weight and I was getting weak.  She said I was the first person to say they thought they lost too much weight.  She removed a few cc's from my band and sent me on my way.  It was great at first.  I could eat and drink without throwing up.  I was eating probably what I should have been eating all along.  Why water intake slowed down a bit because I just didnt feel thirsty. 

Saturday when I weighed myself I was 128. I wasnt too concerned because I knew I was dehydrated and I was probably just getting the lost fluid back.  On Sunday my weight climbed to 135.  I thought it was a tad odd but I pushed it out of my mind.  I had been short of breath for weeks and have been feeling weak and I should have been paying attention to the chest pains I was having periodically having.

Tuesday night at my son's concert my legs started to bother me.  I looked down and realised they were swollen.   When I got up Wednesday my legs were even bigger.  I called the Dr's office and made an appointment with the Nurse practioner because my regular dr was booked.  I weighed in at 148. She looked at me and said my legs looked fine.  I kept telling here they were not fine.  Even fat I had bird legs.  Now I had swollen skin tight legs.  You could not see any of my veins.  She called Dr Gibson in because he saw me recently and he immediately told her my legs were swollen.  They talked about congestive heart failure because I had been weak and coughing and now swelling.   I had a chest xray, ecg and bloop drawn. They put me on lasix 20 mg for three days and scheduled me for a weight check. 

I took the lasix and it made me pee a little bit but it didnt really help much.  When I went to work on Friday and my face was swollen now.  My legs got so huge they looked like tree trunks and the skin was burning like they would burst.  I was short of breath and was having chest pains on and off.  I called the Dr's office and they upped the lasix to two times a day.  They told me if I got any worse to go to the Shady Side ER.

I tried to work but couldnt.  Every time I bent down it felt like my legs would tear open and my breathing got worse.  I called my husband and told him as soon as he finished work at 2:30 to pick me up and we'd head to the ER.

When I got the the ER they repeated the same tests as Dr Gibson did a few days ago and then I was put on a heart monitor.

While I was waiting they compaired the results from there with the results of the tests Dr Gibson had done.

After several hours I was admitted because the test results said I had fluid on my lungs, I was anemic, my potassium and magnisium were low and causing erregular heart rythyms and my red blood cell count was low.

They were not sure if this was cause by a heart attack or another reason.  They scared the crap out of me!  Every dr that saw me over the next few days mentioned the congestive heart failure but all had different reasons for it.  After more tests and an echocardiogram of my heart they decided on a cause.

I was malnutrioned from the lap band and my poor eating over the last few months.  The acid relux had caused damage to my throat and caused me to throw up.  I was so anemic and my levels were so thrown off it caused the irregular heart rythyms that caused the chest pains.  My body shut down and held on to the fluid and I started to drown.  I was lucky that the echo showed no damage to my heart.  They spent the last few days working to get my levels back to normal. 

It is VERY important that people that have had surgery take care of themselves and get the nutrients we need.  It is so easy to get malnutrioned because we are essentially starving ourselves.  I did lose weight as the lap band surgery worked.  It happened at a cost to me because I ignored warning signs. 

If I ignored the signals much longer I could have died.

I was so thankful to be released last night.  I have to work on my nutrion and make sure I get everything I need.  If I did that from the beginning.. This would not have happend.

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