Jan 23

Heart failure: Decline and ER

I promised to use this blog to provide updates on my health — specifically, the ongoing testing and treatment for my congestive heart failure. I expect to have some new information soon, but in the meantime, I want to write a summary of how I got here.

I can’t point to a specific point at which my troubles began, but over the course of 2021, I gradually began to notice some ill effects. Mostly, I was losing stamina and becoming short of breath more often. I chalked this up to my obesity and advancing age, but that didn’t really explain what was happening. My weight wasn’t changing significantly, and I wasn’t aging at an accelerating rate, but I found myself getting tired more easily and having trouble with physical exertion because of shortness of breath. This wasn’t happening all the time, but Bob and Ben can confirm that when I tried to go on long walks with them, I would have to stop and rest frequently, and I still couldn’t keep it up for very long.

It was depressing. I felt like I was getting old prematurely. Things that had been a normal part of my life became more and more difficult. Doing laundry, for example. My apartment is on the third floor, and the laundry room is on the first. Carrying a basket of laundry up and down those stairs hadn’t been a big deal a couple of years ago, but now it was becoming an exhausting ordeal. Even climbing the stairs without a burden was tiring. During the pandemic, I had become more reclusive, going out rarely and relying on grocery and takeout food delivery. At first, that had been more of a convenience; now it was a necessity, because leaving my apartment was a challenge that I was reluctant to face.

Around the beginning of December 2021, the deterioration seemed to accelerate. My weight had been slowly decreasing in November — not a lot, but definitely moving in the right direction. In December, it started increasing, and at a disturbing rate. Between late November and late December I gained 15 pounds. I couldn’t figure out why. I hadn’t gone on an eating binge; in fact, I had cut some things our of my diet to reduce my caloric intake. It didn’t make sense.

Since being diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis (basically, the formation of blood clots) in 2019, I had experienced some edema (swelling due to fluid retention) in my lower legs and feet. This tended to come and go over time. Sometimes there would be no noticeable swelling at all. But in late 2021, the swelling was as bad as it had ever been. And I noticed that my abdomen seemed to be bloating as well. The shortness of breath and fatigue got worse. On recent attempts at long walks, I had been able to walk or speak, but not both at once. I simply couldn’t get enough air for that. And I was tired all the time now, with no energy for anything but basic activities.

I noticed that breathing was more difficult in some positions than in others. It was easiest when I was sitting or standing upright, and most difficult when I was lying down. This made sleeping a challenge. I have an ordinary flat bed, not the kind that can raise the head so that you’re sitting rather than lying. (If I owned a recliner, I would have tried sleeping in it.) I had to carefully control my breathing (in through the nose, out through the mouth) and focus on relaxing in order to fall asleep. And I still wasn’t sleeping very much or very well.

I decided to defy my limitations in order to go to a theater and see Spider-Man: No Way Home. I had been hearing very good things about it, and I was worried that the longer I waited, the greater the chance that I would encounter spoilers. A day or two in advance, I reserved a seat at a showing on Sunday, December 19. But on the morning of the showing, my left foot was so swollen that I didn’t think it would fit into a shoe. I requested a refund for the ticket, and I didn’t go.

By this point, just getting out of my chair and walking across my apartment would cause me to be out of breath. On those occasions when I couldn’t avoid going up or down the stairs, I would have to stop, rest, and catch my breath several times en route. It felt like I was slowly dying. When I turned 62 years old on December 20, I felt 30 or 40 years older than that.

It occurred to me that I might just be sick with an infectious disease. Shortness of breath and fatigue are among the symptoms of COVID-19 and flu. If that was the cause, then eventually I would recover from the disease and get back to normal. I had never thought I would actually hope I had COVID, but that’s how desperate I was. I called my primary medical practice and scheduled a COVID test.

The test took place on December 22. The physican assistant who administered it told me that I would have the results the next day. But I didn’t. When I called the lab company to ask, I was told that it could actually take up to three days. Of course, the third day after the test was Christmas, and it was in the middle of a long holiday weekend. I had planned to visit Mom in Rock Hill for Christmas, but that didn’t seem possible now. I canceled the trip and, for the first time in my life, spent Christmas alone. (Marie had Christmas dinner with friends, and she was kind enough to bring me several plastic containers of food, so I did have Christmas dinner.)

I called again on December 28, the first normal workday after the holiday, and was told that the lab company had no record of my ever having taken the test. Apparently, they had lost it. I would have to retested. I was stunned. But before I could schedule another test, I suddenly received an e-mail from the lab company with the results of the test. They didn’t say how this was possible when they had told me a day before that they couldn’t find it.

I read the results. I was negative for COVID, for both of this year’s strains of flu, and for respiratory syncytial virus. Good news, right? Not at all. In fact, I was frightened by the news. It meant that my symptoms were not going to go away on their own, because I wasn’t sick with a virus. Something else was causing my shortness of breath and fatigue. And at this point, my lung capacity was barely enough to keep me alive. If I did catch something that compromised it further, like COVID or flu, it would probably kill me.

I realized that I had run out of options. I had to go to the hospital. That evening, the night of December 29, I drove myself to WakeMed Cary and parked outside the entrance to the emergency department. Unfortunately, I had to park on the far side of the parking lot. It wasn’t a large parking lot, and had I been in good health, I could have walked to the entrance in a minute or two. But I wasn’t in good health, and I also had some things to carry. Knowing that I would probably be admitted, I had packed a gym bag with a few necessities. And I had the messenger bag that goes everywhere with me (basically my version of a purse). So I slung those bags on my person and started the trek to the entrance.

In my memory, that walk across the parking lot is the emotional low point. It seemed to take forever. I couldn’t move very fast, and I kept having to stop and catch my breath. Would I even make it to the door? Or would I collapse and die in the parking lot? That sounds melodramatic now, even to me. But it’s what was going through my head at the time.

Finally, I reached the entrance, approached the front desk, and explained (stopping frequently for breath) why I was there. Almost immediately, I was helped into a wheelchair and rolled into a sort of anteroom where I answered a bunch of questions from a nurse. Then a doctor checked my vital signs and reviewed what I had reported about my symptoms. On the basis of my difficulty breathing and the recent rapid weight gain, I was taken into a room in the emergency department for treatment.

In my next post, I’ll try to summarize my experience in the hospital and the events that followed.

Apr 10

Asymmetric warfare

This is a public service announcement directed at the world’s five-year-old children. I am aware that if you decide to attack me, I can be overwhelmed by a sufficient number of you. However, I will not go down without a fight. And according to this test, I am capable of taking almost two dozen of you with me:

23

Bear this in mind as you make your plans.

Mar 22

Dial S for Skynet

When I wrote a few days ago about how Arthur C. Clarke predicted the World Wide Web, I was not aware that he had actually inspired its creation. But since then, I have learned from multiple sources that Tim Berners-Lee cites Clarke’s 1964 short story “Dial F for Frankenstein” as a major inspiration for his invention of the Web.

I have read that story before (in fact, I just reread it; it’s only five pages long), and it has never occurred to me that it might have anything to do with the Web. It describes how the activation of new satellites unites the world’s telephone networks into a single global system that is as complex as a human brain. This global network becomes conscious, with dire consequences for humanity.

“Dial F for Frankenstein” does strike me as a prediction (or, possibly, an inspiration) of something that came decades later. But, with all due respect to Sir Tim, I don’t think it’s the Web. Anyone who has seen Terminator 2: Judgement Day will know exactly what I mean.

Sep 05

Be very afraid

Scientists are continually finding new evidence that everything is trying to kill you, and I do my best to point out new findings of this sort. In the past, I’ve warned you to be afraid of church air and flip-flops. Today I’m also warning you that laser printers and microwave popcorn are deadly. As a precaution, you should wear a hazmat suit at all times while in your office — and at home, too, if you have any laser printers or microwave popcorn there. No need to thank me; I’m just posting this information as a public service.
UPDATE: In order to better highlight this sort of news, I have created a new category of blog posts called “Things that will kill you.”

Jul 05

Go fish

Yikes! A man fishing in the Catawba River near Mount Holly, NC caught a piranha last week. And not a little one, either — this piranha weighed 1 pound 4 ounces, and bit the man’s pocketknife hard enough to leave marks on the blade.
I say “Yikes!” because I have gone swimming in the Catawba River.
Well, technically, I swam in Lake Wylie, but it amounts to the same thing. Lake Wylie is a South Carolina reservoir that was created by damming the Catawba. And Lake Wylie is downstream from where the piranha was caught.
If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to have a panic attack now.
UPDATE: In her comment, my mother relays the news that the fish wasn’t a piranha after all.

Mar 03

Under pressure

Following a link from Instapundit, I read a Popular Mechanics article on Extreme Plumbing by Jamie Hyneman of MythBusters fame. Jamie makes the following point about pressure tanks:

The forces at play with high-pressure tanks can be huge. If the energy stored in a workshop air-compressor tank is released all at once, it can hurt or kill a person. I once complained to our insurers, “Why are you so fussy about the explosives we use on the show? Every day we make rigs using pressure tanks that are just as dangerous.” Big mistake. Now they fuss about pressure tanks, too.

As it happens, I was reading this shortly after I got home from Raleigh Little Theatre, where I spent all day working on the first technical rehearsal of House of Blue Leaves. I am assistant stage manager for this play, and one of my responsibilities is to handle the special effects that are used when, halfway through Act 2, a bomb explodes just offstage. One of those special effects is a compressed-air cannon that fires a load of fuller’s earth through a doorway onto the stage, simulating the cloud of dust and smoke produced by the explosion. The cannon fires when I open a valve that releases air from a pressure tank.
In fact, one of the last things I did at RLT before coming home was to repressurize that tank to 80 psi so that it’s ready for tomorrow’s dress rehearsal. Then I came home and read Jamie’s explanation that pressure tanks are dangerous and can kill you.
Actually, I’m not worried. If you read his entire article, you’ll see that that paragraph is scary only when taken out of context. Sure, pressure tanks can be dangerous if you use them in a reckless or irresponsible way, but the MythBusters don’t do that, and neither do theatre techies like me. Jamie’s article is really about how many of the challenges on MythBusters have been solved with plumbing and pressure tanks, and what that tells us about how useful and powerful that technology is. And fun, of course. I’m certainly going to be careful operating my cannon over the next several weeks, but I’d be lying if I said it won’t be a big thrill to set it off.

Nov 22

The church menace

In case you don’t have enough things to lie awake at night worrying about, here’s one you probably weren’t aware of: you’re not even safe in church. In fact, your church is going to kill you. According to a study published in the European Respiratory Journal, church air is full of incense and candle smoke and will give you lung cancer, especially at Christmastime. Antoine Clarke points out the obvious corrective measures: “Immediately ban church-going for all children, impose a tax on adult church-goers, put health warning signs on the outside of all churches and copies of the Bible. Oh, and ban Christmas.”