Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Exercise...

If you have PH you know that exercising can be hard to do..but I have decided that I need to start at least walking on the treadmill. Today is day 3 doing it, hopefully I can keep it up. I feel so much better after walking on it, it's just finding the time to do it!

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

3+ years ago...

Long story short....

October 2006, I had been married for 5 months. Best time of my life right?! WRONG.....I was passing out and having a fast heart rate. Doctors had previously misdiagnosed me with something else. I passed out on October 1st where my husband had to give me CPR and saved my life. The ambulance got there 20 minutes later where they took me to a hospital in Missouri. The doctors there realized something was really off, so they sent me to a bigger hospital in Kansas City.

After having every test ran on me and being in the hospital for weeks, they finally found out that I had something called Pulmonary Hypertension (PH). Pulmonary Hypertension? What in the world is that I had never heard of it.

The doctors threw the bad news to me that I had this PH and then they proceeded to tell me that I was going to need a double lung heart transplant! I was in shock, but somehow knew everything was going to be okay. We had family and friends fly out to see me (for maybe the last time?) My doctor at the time researched treatments for PH and found the drug called Flolan. (later to find out we would have a love/hate relationship)

Flolan worked great, but the downfall was that I had to have a central line placed and this drug ran through it constantly with NEVER stopping. I thought my life had ended. But actually this medicine helped my "new" life begin!

I have had a few bumps in the road since I got out of the hospital on October 31st, but I have a new outlook on life and things have been going pretty good since then.

I know it has been 3+ years since I have been diagnosed with PH, but I feel like I need to share with others that have it and let them know that there is life after being diagnosed. I am married, adopted a child, and living a pretty normal life (what is normal anyway?!). I don't know if anyone will read this, but I hope it changes the outlook on at least one persons life that has PH.

Nicole