softie
Posts:
1,070
From:
Croydon, Surrey
Registered:
07-Feb-2004
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Re: softie
Posted:
26-Mar-2004 15:26
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They first diagnosed it as dilated cardiomyopathy (translation: Enlarged, weak-muscled heart). Something (possibly a virus) attacked the muscle of the big chamber on the left side, the one that pumps blood to the body. As the smaller chamber that pumps blood into the bigger chamber was still working at full capacity the big chamber was slowly inflating like a balloon. Also, blood was backing up into my lungs, causing pulmonary hypertension and pulmonary oedema. I was getting terrible breathlessness because my lungs were saturated.
They gave me diuretics to dry out my lungs, and a whole load of drugs to expand all my veins and arteries so my heart would have less work pumping the blood, and some digoxin to help correct an arrhythmia that had started to affect my heart. It all worked very nicely and I stopped being so badly breathless, and my heart has now shrunk back to normal size, though the large chamber still can't quite empty itself properly.
As my heart has shrunk and the other side is now also somewhat affected they are starting to describe it as congestive heart failure.
Sorry to hear you're getting problems. Have they yet put you on any drugs for it?
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hope you don't mind...