Tag Archives: food

Yes I’m Still Alive!

Fuji Apple

It’s been a few months since the last blog post. I am happy to report that 1. I am still alive and 2. I try to live my life the best as I possibly can within the tight confines of my situation. No I have not regressed on a downward spiral. Fact is at my last check-up on April 6, I did fairly good.

My vitals are ok.

  • Weight 220 lbs. down from 231 in October.
  • Blood Pressure 120/64 April 6
  • Blood Pressure Today 114/70 (home test)

I am taking several regular medications but that has been reduced from the many I used to take shortly after I got out of surgery. It has been more than a year now since the heart surgery.

I am also eating healthier though I sometimes have to enjoy myself and indulge once in awhile. Mostly though it is fish or skinless boneless chicken, vegetables, lots of onions, no salt, drinking only water 99% of the time, eating some breads with spreads for breakfast. I also eat oatmeal fairly regularly with only water and cinnamon added in – no sugar. I should do a healthy food post.

Exercise – I try to walk 2 miles every day and for the most part I do. Best times for walking is early in the morning or early evening. Once in a while I walk right smack in the middle of the day. Been keeping track of most of my walk with pedometer software installed on 2 of the 3 smart-phones I own (only one of them is connected to an active service).

I’ll write more about walking, eating, health technology, and whatever else.

However I am writing to let you know that I am expanding the scope of the blog to include other stories in my life, such as job hunting, past accomplishments, photos essays and whatever. I do have separate blogs to cover many of those (look at the sidebar) but perhaps some of those types of topics may be cross-posted here.

Until the next post, aloha!

Colorful Veggies
Photos appearing on this page and the rest of the blog were taken by me unless noted.

Food Donation Day

Fill a bag. Help feed families.

Fill a bag. Help feed families.

I took advantage of this opportunity to rid my cupboard of all those salty, unhealthy, unopened foods that I bought in the recent past. Now they will be distributed to people who need them and not go to total waste.

Of course I’ll probably have no food to eat when the next disaster like a hurricane or earthquake strikes. 🙂

The follow-up to my previous post is coming soon.

Back to the Emergency Room & Hospitalization

THROWBACK THURSDAY (#TBT)

Kaiser Moanalua

Kaiser’s Moanalua Hospital. File photo by Mel.

So like this blog has fell behind. My second hospital confinement is being labeled as “Throwback Thursday” since it happened more than 3 months ago now. I’m doing well today. But on January 10 I ended up in the emergency room only 5 days after being released. The following is a brief account of that time.

I was released from the hospital on January 5.

I started keeping a log of my meals, medications and more in a tablet starting on January 6. The following are brief summaries from entries I wrote in the log after my initial release from Kaiser Moanalua.

January 6: Took my morning medications: Oxycodone for pain; and then later Amiodarone, Low Dose Aspirin, Famotidine, Furosemide, Metoprolol, and Terazosin. At the time these and a few more for my evening routine were / are considered essential to my post-up survival. My evening meds included some of the above in addition to Atorvastatin and Warfarin. It was difficult at the beginning to get used to the medication names, dosages and times of day to take each one.

Meals were limited to small portions of fish, fruits, veggies and cereal with low fat milk during breakfast. In those early days after my initial discharge, things were tough.

Walking was a chore. I moved very slowly because my breathing accelerated and grew tired quickly after walking only a short distance. However walking was the key to my recovery as the doctors encouraged more walking many times every day.

Besides walking, PAIN was… well a pain! I was also encouraged to cough the mucus out that built up in my lungs after surgery. I was still required to hold the heart pillow against my chest. For the month of January, the pain level at every cough was a severe 6, 7 or 8 on the numeric pain scale of 0 to 10.

Pain was a constant companion after surgery for many weeks and is still around today but not as intense as it was in January.

Shortly after my release from the hospital I bought a blood pressure monitor. I also have a Pulse Oximeter which I bought for my Mom in 2014. I got it back after she passed away last year. The former device measures your blood pressure and the latter measures your breathing and heartbeat. The blood pressure monitor also gives out a heartbeat reading.

It is a good thing I had these devices at home.

January 6Pulse: 96 bpm O2 – 95: I learned early on that a pulse rate of 96 is considered high. That pulse rate was with me after my surgery and would spike higher when I walked around in the hospital.

January 7 — 8:00 am — Pulse 96 bpm O2 – 93 | BP 125/85 Later that day: BP 144/89

January 7 – 6:30 pm — BP 149/89 Pulse 97 bpm

January 8 – 5:30 am – I had a higher heart rate that morning when I walked a very short distance: Pulse 112 bpm. A blood pressure reading one hour later: 117/74 Pulse 102 bpm 10:30 am – Pulse 96 bpm BP 123/84 8:40 PM BP 120/83 Pulse 88 bpm

January 9 – 11:15 am BP 115/78 Pulse 90 bpm

January 10 – I had a hard time breathing that morning. Shortness of breath. I could hardly walk or move around without running out of breath. It was decided early that morning that I would be driven to the hospital emergency room. Sandra and I were originally going to take a taxi from the hotel to Kaiser Moanalua. That did not work out. I tried to walk out of the room and in the hallway but rapidly ran out of breath. I could feel the shortness of breath as well as my accelerated heartbeat. Had I continued walking I probably would have collapsed. Therefore I turned around and walked slowly back to the room.

We called 911.

The Oximeter reading that morning showed an O2 rate of 94 (normal) but a pulse of 112 bpm. The paper log stopped after the that for 2 days.

THE AMBULANCE RIDE: It took about 20 minutes (again) before the City’s EMS ambulance arrived. Two paramedics came up to the room and took me away on a gurney. Sandra accompanied me on the ambulance. She rode in the front seat with the driver. She was quite impressed as to how quickly the vehicle moved and more than that, how quickly other drivers in front of the ambulance moved out of the way. I was fully conscious and aware of where we were going. We raced up Keeaumoku St., turned left on Beretania than again on Piikoi to take the on-ramp to the H1 freeway. We got to the emergency room in about 15 minutes. All the way there I was hooked up to an EKG monitor as well as other devices while the paramedics read off numbers and communicated with the hospital.

HOSPITALIZATION…. AGAIN: I spent about two hours in the emergency room before the doctor on call decided to admit me and keep me “under observation”. I was taken to a nearby complex of small rooms where patients are placed “under observation”. It was not the same telemetry ward that I was in during my initial hospitalization. For the next two days I was hooked up to a constant IV drip of Amidarone (for heart fibrillation) among other medications.

I vividly remember is that while being moved out of the emergency room and to one of the observation rooms, they had my heart hooked up to an audio heart monitor. It played out each heartbeat which sounded like a Pong game gone wild. The chaotic heartbeat was a sure sign that something was wrong with me. If this was not treated I could have had a stroke. Fluid buildup in my left lung was also a culprit.

In time, the drug therapy worked and by the afternoon on January 12 I was discharged.

January 13 – Out of the hospital and back at “home”. 8:16 am – O2 94 Pulse 83 bpm. 10:00 am Blood test at Kaiser Clinic on Pensacola St.

January 14 – Walking more; down the hallway and to the lobby. Better than Jan. 10. Pulse sitting 99 bpm. At 3:10 pm that day I noticed higher heartbeat rates of 106, 108, 109, 111, 103, 97 and more just sitting in place after walking. I called Kaiser’s cardiology department and talk to Nurse Ruth. Can’t remember exactly what she told me then, but I think it was to keep monitoring and call her again the next day.

By this time I was taking Amidarone twice a day, once in the morning and again in the evening. Over time the Amidarone did its job. My heart rate, fibrillation eventually slowed down to “normal” levels.