Since I bothered to write about my edema problem a few days ago, I thought a quick update might be in order. My sister, Barbara is already concerned enough to have called and texted me and I suspect I am just a step away from having nursing home materials sent to me by her. It’s nice to have people be concerned about your well-being, but I will remind everyone that most of us overthink our health issues and, as they say in medical school training, tend to think zebras instead of horses. Perhaps it is my near complete lack of specific medical concerns or maladies that makes me think about all the worst case scenarios every time I go through one of these corrective episodes. So, what is the dropsy update?
To begin with, the bugger that caused all this fuss is that sore on my lower right ankle that wouldn’t heal. I have left the bandage off for a full day now and I can say that it seems to be healing up finally. There is still the big square red mark around it where the prior pre-glued edges extended. It turns out that pre-glued bandages are not particularly good for my skin, but I assume that stencil will not be a permanent part of my leg landscape and that it will eventually fade back to normal skin coloring. The point though is that for some combination of reasons, airing out my ankle has started to make this problem go away. I will still go to the wound clinic on Tuesday to see what they say, but I suspect that I will get laughed out of the place based on my relatively minor boo-boo.
I have also booked the three tests requested by my doctor. It turns out that these are hard to schedule tests so I have my echocardiogram the week after next and then the two venous extremity scans the following week. To a certain extent, the casualness of this timing combined with my medical online chart saying that I should get the test by December make me wonder just how serious anyone thinks this problem really is. In none of these cases has it been implied that my testing or treatment should be done post haste to avoid further deterioration in my condition. Either the medical profession is very unconcerned about my longevity or the problem just isn’t that severe or at least not that urgent. Whenever I mention edema to any physician, they seem to nod and start wondering how they can pass this issue off to another caregiver, since they all seem relatively unclear on how to address or correct the condition…or perhaps how serious it really is.
The most significant thing that has happened is that my doctor swapped out my diuretic for a new one and I have been on that for three days now. In my reading up on diuretics, I had come to believe that my prior prescription was the strongest diuretic normally prescribed. I had also asked to lower the dosage so as to make functioning in the morning (i.e. not having to run to the bathroom every 5 minutes). At this point, my edema issue causes me to care less about the inconvenience of the diuretic and more about its effectiveness. From what I can tell, I have been given a dosage amount of the new medication that is four times as potent as the prior dose (spread out more over the day). The impact has been almost immediate. The stuff lasts for 6 hours, which means that for 12 hours out of each day, I pretty much have a need to pee at all times. I earned on the first might that I would choose 7am -1pm and more or less 3pm – 9pm for my medicated sessions. I have paid attention over the past three days and while there is some normalizing of the fluid discharge from my body, it is still pretty significant on a daily basis. Since 60% of a man’s body weight is water, I have a lot of water available to discharge.
Hold onto your hats for this information. I weighed myself on Monday morning when we got home. I was expecting that I had lost a little weight over the three weeks we were away (I always do for one reason or another). I had done just that to the tune of about 3 pounds…somewhat less than I had expected. My doctor visit and start on the new diuretic began on Tuesday evening. It is now Friday morning, so four days since I first weighed in and three days since I’ve been on the new meds. In that time my weight has fallen by 19 pounds. I have discharged what must be about 10% of my bodily fluid. I should note that I have alerted my doctor about this, just to be safe. She has said that if this continues, I may have to go on some potassium supplements since it may otherwise throw off my electrolytes. Electrolytes are minerals in your body that carry an electric charge and are essential for many vital functions. When dissolved in body fluids, they break apart into ions (charged particles) that help conduct electrical signals throughout your body. The main electrolytes include Sodium (helps regulate fluid balance and blood pressure), Potassium (crucial for heart rhythm and muscle contractions), Chloride (works with sodium to maintain fluid balance), Calcium (important for bone health and muscle function), Magnesium (supports hundreds of enzyme reactions), and Phosphate (helps with energy storage and bone formation). Your body uses electrolytes to maintain proper fluid balance inside and outside cells, transmit nerve signals, contract muscles (including your heart), and maintain proper pH levels. They’re like the body’s electrical system – without them, nerve and muscle cells couldn’t communicate effectively. OK, so that’s worth paying attention to.
Kim has already noticed my weight loss and told me that I’m looking skinny. This is another reason for me to like Kim. Skinny is simply not a term that has ever or will ever get rationally applied to me. I may look relatively skinnier, but skinny is still about 100 pounds or more away. What this has done is made my pants fall down more than normal and I note that I am on the last of my belt holes, so I will have to get out the hole puncher again.
While I await some instruction about adding back supplements to my diet to make sure my bodily electrical system stays properly charged, I am least trying hard to keep hydrated. I notice that this powerful new diuretic wants to such fluid out of me whether there is any immediately available or not. That is a less comfortable feeling than the one of having some fluid in there to prime the pump, so to speak. So, I am making sure that I drink as much water as I can to keep the whole operation moving and not sounding like my garden fountain when its running low on water. I suspect that I have wasted away about as much as this diuretic is going to make me waste away and that things will be coming into balance shortly. This is like hitting yourself in the head to make your arm stop hurting. My edema is significantly reduced and that was the main reason for all of this. The thing about weight loss from my experience is that it is somewhat of a momentum game. I seem to have the momentum right now, so I will try to drive on with this trend a bit further and hopefully lock in some further losses. I’ll report back as I go, but for now I will just keep wasting away.
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Funny😆