Friday, April 2, 2010

Watching and Waiting

My husband now weighs 224. On March 3rd, when I last talked about him, he weighed 246. He's getting so skinny. Technically his weight for his height is still overweight but he doesn't look healthy to me. He doesn't look strong anymore. He looks weak and like a man who is struggling.

While he has since recovered from the pneumonia, he continues to be tired and run-down. He had the CT angiogram of his chest, however the tech didn't put down any pulmonary pressures - which was the point of doing this test! I was aggravated to say the least. He's now having ECG changes which indicate that his non-ischemic dilated cardiomyopathy is becoming ischemic dilated cadriomyopathy. What does that mean you ask? It means that his heart muscle may now be deprived of enough oxygenation whereas it wasn't before. Not good. We have decided to proceed with left and right-sided heart cath to get more exact numbers and hopefully clear him to have a third lead put in his heart (currently has two - one to shock and the other to pace). We were told that the third lead might increase his function and might help him to feel better. Ok, sign him up! The cath will probably be sometime in the upcoming week.

The next day, he has an hour of chest/arm pain in the wee hours of the morning. He's up out of bed, can't get comfortable. I find out about this 6 hours later when i call from work to check on him. Naturally we had a little discussion about signs of bad shit happening! If it happens again, we were instructed to bring him to the ER and they will do the cath as an emergency. Fortunately it hasn't happened again.

So I watch, and we both wait. It's stressful. I think he's getting depressed. He spends all his time sleeping or watching TV. I told him today - you can't just give up and grow roots into the sofa. You should do what you can do. Stay active to whatever extent possible. Spend time with the kids, with me.

My best friend and I have had a fight. It's pretty bad. I said some things that weren't very tactful or came out quite like I meant them to. She said some things that I don't know if I can get over. Not sure what will happen with this situation.

2 comments:

Joy@WDDCH said...

Oh I am so sorry to hear all of this! Will be praying for your husband!

minority midwife said...

no worries,

best friends survive anything.

Hang in there.