The nurse helped me raise one leg of my jeans above my boot. She pushed her thumb into the skin and released it. The depression in the skin and muscle stayed. I’ve never seen anything like that. Then she asked what my symptoms were, and I told her. A week earlier, my personal health care worker had seen it with her own eyes. Not the leg, something else. The symptoms, the nurse said, align perfectly with congestive heart failure. My heart rate was low, and in the low 50s, blood pressure was equally low. I’d been feeling off for a while, had known something w1as wrong, but it didn’t seem serious. Fatigue, trouble walking, loss of appetite, abdominal pain, and severe problems breathing when lying down to sleep. It felt like a panic attack combined with a heart attack. It’s a pretty bad thing to have, and only when it hit that level of intensity did it become impossible for me not to see the doctor.
An ekg was ordered. Whereas I’d had a nuclear stress test done three weeks prior and no real difference was found, today the ekg was abnormal. I forgot which waves she said were affected, but it amounts to the heart pumping blood in okay, but not out. Congestive heart failure.
It’s treatable, but if nothing else gets me, this one will. I also could need open heart surgery, but that’s not possible. I’ll never survive that. I guess after the echocardiogram and lab results, I’ll know more. They suspect possible kidney failure, too.
It’s time for another recess period now. I need rest. Please pray for me if it should cross your mind. I thank you in advance.
Be back before you know it.
God bless you.
Memoirs of an American Christian 