It all started during the last half of 2009. Due to various things, my life had become very high stress, and being an emotional eater, I dealt with that by eating. The first hints that things in my body were not well, at least the ones beyond being obese, was that by October I was getting sick fairly frequently. Then at the beginning of November I got the H1N1 flu. I got over it in a week or so, but had a lingering cough. Slowly that cough got worse, but I didn't really notice it. Slowly I found going up and down stairs I would run out of breath, but I figured it was just because I weighed so much for my frame (250-260 pounds) and needed to get in shape. So I started to eat healthier and workout again, but I still kept running out of breath and coughing. Then on Sunday December 13th I got up coughing. I could barely breath, had a fever, and was coughing up mucus mixed with blood. I called Telehealth Ontario and was told I needed to see a doctor in 6 hours. They contacted the on call doctor at the medical clinic where my doctor practices and they got me in there in a couple of hours. I had pneumonia, and by the next day when my x-rays came back and I saw my doctor, I found out I had a bad case of it.
The next several days were spent sleeping, when I could, and trying to recover. After a month off work I had a follow-up X-ray only to find the pneumonia had not cleared at all, I had just gotten used to being sick. They put me on two strong antibiotics and scheduled a CT scan of my lungs. They also found that I had extremely high blood pressure, and while I can't remember the exact numbers they were extremely high.
The next antibiotics worked well, and in two days I felt much better. Six days after finding out the pneumonia had not cleared at all I had the CT scan and it showed things clearing up. Then several days after that I woke up with the right side of my face feeling numb, similar to how it would feel after the dentist administered Novocain. I was also slurring my speech and had lost the fine coordination in my fingers so I had a hard time typing. Later that day I saw my doctor. Even with meds my blood pressure had again skyrocketed and she sent me on to the hospital where the eventual diagnosis was that I had had a small stroke. After another CT-scan, this time of my head and neck, an MRI of my head and neck, and a Cardio-echo of my heart, not to mention a huge amount of blood tests in the hospital they had no real idea on why I had the stroke as nothing was conclusive.
I got out after 5 days and went home. Feeling better, but still unable to work for another month or so, I went home realizing that I had to change my lifestyle. I needed to loose weight (something that had already started with all this having my weight go down from 255 to 235 in the two weeks from finding out my pneumonia had not cleared up) and get healthy. I needed to change what I eat, and how I live. That was a necessity for me.
In time it was determined that the stroke was caused by either an atypical pneumonia or a virus that took advantage of my decrease immune function due to the pneumonia to reduce my heart function (when they did the Cardio-echo in the hospital my ejection fraction was 30-35% and should have been 60-65%) causing a small clot to form. It broke loose and went to my brain causing the stroke. Thanks to God, my heart function returned to normal by May, when they did a follow up echo, and barring the same thing happening it is unlikely that I will have another stroke.
It is part of my quest to get in good shape, loose fat, gain muscle, get my blood pressure down and get off all the medications I am on, that I have started this blog. The good news is over the past several months I have lost weight (currently I am around 200 pounds) and my medications have been reduced. I no longer take ramipril, my metoprolol dosage has been reduced, as has my dosage of amlodipine. My blood pressure is better, although since reducing the amlodipine in August, it has not been as good as it was before that change. I still have 30-40 pounds to loose, but that looks like a much more attainable goal since I have lost more than that already.
That gives some of my background, and why fitness is a necessity for me. The reason for this blog is to put down my thoughts and provide helpful information to others who also realize the necessity of fitness.
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