![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Heart failure? Surely not!
Jun. 4th, 2008 04:57 pmI've been feeling a lot better the last few days since my cough and rhinitis have got so much better and I'm able to sleep lying down. The cough and rhinitis have been so persistent that I was afraid I was stuck with them for good. That would have made life very hard. Of course the one really nice day we had recently, on Sunday, I was so tired after being awake all night that I spent the whole day in bed and didn't get anything done, anywhere, let alone in the garden. Since then the weather has been pretty awful, although it's cheered up a bit today.
Today I went to my first cardiac rehabilitation class. It was rather like being at kindergarten and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I didn't get to do any exercise today because before the class started they tested my walking to exhaustion and told me to sit and watch everyone else, but I reckon it will be a piece of cake if I can manage to stand for the required length of time, since there's pretty constant movement which would help. It's mostly stretching and stuff, followed by a modified form of stepping, training with hand weights, which I already do in my chair, with access to a cross trainer and exercise cycles and various other bits of kit.
I did find it disconcerting to be told every few minutes that now I had heart failure I would need to be aware of....... whatever. I don't really like to think of it in those terms, because, after all, as I said to the nurse, everyone dies of heart failure in the end. It's upset Charles a bit, too, because he saw the forms I have to fill in which are headed Heart Failure and Fatigue Management and similar. I had been careful not to tell him I had heart failure, because I knew it would upset him but I didn't think to hide them and he saw them on my desk. He's decided that I only have a little bit of heart failure!!
The other thing was that when she asked me what I was hoping to do after I'd been on the course, and I replied that I wanted to be able to walk at Kielder again and go swimming, the nurse observed that many of my fellow patients just want to be able to walk round their gardens, so made me think that maybe my goals are unrealistic. That may be true, but from what I've seen today, even now I'm much fitter than most of the people at that class. Being the awkward hooter that I am it's made me more determined to try to get fit enough to go walking at Kielder, even if I can't do any hill-walking any more.
This afternoon, I telephone my Lovely Lady Doctor to ask if I could take a higher dose of the Irbesartan, since the 150mg was only lasting till mid afternoon, so she's doubled the dose and we shall see how I get on.
A couple of useful things which have come out of today's visit, though, are that they're going to send round a technician when he gets back from his holiday to install a second handrail on the stairs and to put in a handrail to help me get up out of the bath. There was loose talk of a "perching stool" to help me do cooking and other things as well, which might be quite handy.
I've been told to have a rest after lunch, which makes me feel a bit less guilty about falling asleep in my chair, and advised to have up to six small meals a day rather than a couple of larger ones. I shall see how it all goes. Being diabetic may make that a bit more difficult. I'm already a bit concerned about my high Blood Glucose levels. Perhaps now I've more or less got over the cough and chest thing my bg might settle down a bit. The other difficulty will be persuading Charles that I should eat less but more often. He tries to fill me to bursting normally, and I discussed this with him this afternoon. Even so, he proposes to make meatballs with spaghetti for dinner. I've warned him that I shall only eat a small portion, but could maybe keep some for tomorrow's lunch.
Oh! The sun's out now and it's a lovely evening. If it's nice tomorrow, maybe I can have a go at the pots in the yard in the afternoon, after my writing class.
Today I went to my first cardiac rehabilitation class. It was rather like being at kindergarten and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I didn't get to do any exercise today because before the class started they tested my walking to exhaustion and told me to sit and watch everyone else, but I reckon it will be a piece of cake if I can manage to stand for the required length of time, since there's pretty constant movement which would help. It's mostly stretching and stuff, followed by a modified form of stepping, training with hand weights, which I already do in my chair, with access to a cross trainer and exercise cycles and various other bits of kit.
I did find it disconcerting to be told every few minutes that now I had heart failure I would need to be aware of....... whatever. I don't really like to think of it in those terms, because, after all, as I said to the nurse, everyone dies of heart failure in the end. It's upset Charles a bit, too, because he saw the forms I have to fill in which are headed Heart Failure and Fatigue Management and similar. I had been careful not to tell him I had heart failure, because I knew it would upset him but I didn't think to hide them and he saw them on my desk. He's decided that I only have a little bit of heart failure!!
The other thing was that when she asked me what I was hoping to do after I'd been on the course, and I replied that I wanted to be able to walk at Kielder again and go swimming, the nurse observed that many of my fellow patients just want to be able to walk round their gardens, so made me think that maybe my goals are unrealistic. That may be true, but from what I've seen today, even now I'm much fitter than most of the people at that class. Being the awkward hooter that I am it's made me more determined to try to get fit enough to go walking at Kielder, even if I can't do any hill-walking any more.
This afternoon, I telephone my Lovely Lady Doctor to ask if I could take a higher dose of the Irbesartan, since the 150mg was only lasting till mid afternoon, so she's doubled the dose and we shall see how I get on.
A couple of useful things which have come out of today's visit, though, are that they're going to send round a technician when he gets back from his holiday to install a second handrail on the stairs and to put in a handrail to help me get up out of the bath. There was loose talk of a "perching stool" to help me do cooking and other things as well, which might be quite handy.
I've been told to have a rest after lunch, which makes me feel a bit less guilty about falling asleep in my chair, and advised to have up to six small meals a day rather than a couple of larger ones. I shall see how it all goes. Being diabetic may make that a bit more difficult. I'm already a bit concerned about my high Blood Glucose levels. Perhaps now I've more or less got over the cough and chest thing my bg might settle down a bit. The other difficulty will be persuading Charles that I should eat less but more often. He tries to fill me to bursting normally, and I discussed this with him this afternoon. Even so, he proposes to make meatballs with spaghetti for dinner. I've warned him that I shall only eat a small portion, but could maybe keep some for tomorrow's lunch.
Oh! The sun's out now and it's a lovely evening. If it's nice tomorrow, maybe I can have a go at the pots in the yard in the afternoon, after my writing class.
