Congestive Heart Failure at 34….What???

It all started 3 weeks ago, John was going through a bout where he was coughing all of the time. At this point is chest was hurting him so bad I thought that he really had pneumonia. So he finally asked me to take him to the hospital. He went through x-rays and even a cat scan to determine if maybe he had punctured a long, but everything came back ok. He was released that night with an upper respiratory infection, given tramadol for the chest pain and Z-pack for the infection.
A week later we were in our family doctor’s office because his symptoms weren’t getting any better. The doctor informs us that the cat scan showed that though he didn’t have any signs of a punctured lung or pneumonia it did show that he had a broken 6th rib, which the hospital never called and informed us of. He was again given another round of a different kind of antibiotics, another script of tramadol for the broken ribs, started on a new blood pressure medication (Ziac) and an inhaler of albuteral.
For a week he worked. He went everyday driving an 80,000 pound vehicle, because that is the way he was raised. You work, sick or not to take care of your family.
This past Saturday, he was swelling in his stomach and had some edema in his legs. He told me that his stomach felt like you could stick a pin in his stomach and he would just pop. Soooo, back to the hospital we went. This time they put him on and EKG machine and had him hooked up to bp and O2 saturation monitors. His blood pressure was through the roof, and his O2 sats were decent. They took some blood, and did some more x-rays and the doctor came back into the room and informed us that My 34 year old husband was in Congestive Heart Failure and needed to be admitted to get the fluid off from his heart and lungs or he was going to be in sever respiratory and cardiac distress.
At 5am Sunday morning, he was admitted into the hospital and immediatley given a substantial dose of Lasix and 2 different kinds of blood pressure medication. One of them being Lacinapro. By 9am they had oxygen on him at 3% on nasal cannula because as he slept his o2 sat levels were dropping to 70. Through the day Sunday they just continued the blood pressure medication, adding a 3rd and the lasix support to rid his body of the fluids.
Monday…..5am, lasix was again administered but no bp meds on board this morning because his bp was 100/58 which is WAYYYY better than the 178/110 that we started at Saturday night. He had an echo on his heart this morning and now we are just waiting on the cardiologist to see John to determine what the next steps are that needs to be taken. We know that if his heart is strong enough then they will be perfoWe asked why this took so long for it to be diagnosed correctly and the nurse turned to me and said “Because a 34 year old man doesn’t have congestive heart failure.” All I can do right now is Thank god for the E.R. doctor that took the time to listen to all of the symptoms that he was having and doing the right thing and finding out what was wrong with my husband…I could have lost him this week if it wasn’t for him.
Things will be changing now for our family and I thought that I would invite you all in on our journey.
We have to change a lifestyle that we have been living for far to long. So as soon as I know he is out of the woods for good. I will be going home and cleaning our cabinets out. No more salt, no more soda, and we need to get Wii fit and wii active for John and I to do together. We are going to become a more active family and we have to do this to save my husband life.
So you are welcome to join me in our day to day journal of the way things need to be, the ups and downs and ins and outs of congestive heart failure and severely high blood pressure and the pains of starting a life anew.rming a procedure to reduce the amount of fluid that has built up in his abdomen.



Update:

The Cardiologist came in about 2 today and told us that John’s heart isn’t releasing right..It’s weaker then he would like to see it. A normal heart releases 55 % of the blood that it takes in and John’s is only releasing about 25%. In a couple of days after they get a little more fluid out of his body they will be transferring him to Fairfield Medical Center and doing a heart catheterization in the next couple of days to find out why John’s heart is so weak. The doctor’s at Logan have him on the right path to help make his heart stronger. They have his blood pressure under control and upped his lasix dose.