Not the end of the weekend I had planned…

Not a bad view to enjoy during my time here 😎

Well, this may come as a surprise to some and an update to others, but I’ve had quite the journey over the past couple days. Nothing changes in the end result, I will win, but this is obviously going to be a bit tougher than my first go-round with cancer.

Last week I was not getting the relief from treatment (or so I thought…) that I normally had been getting. In fact, it seemed to be getting worse on some levels. More nauseous was, fatigue, out of breath, pain, and a little more tightness and discomfort on breathing. All building a bit throughout the week.

Sunday started out decently, but seemed to take a turn quickly. A morning of getting some work done and then relaxing, quickly faded. Breathing got harder and I was fatigued just walking around the house. Laying down in bed felt a bit better, but I am learning enough that I told K I thought we might have to go in. Well, after attempting to take a bath and feeling like I was going to pass out after 5 seconds in there just from walking around, I was out, laying down in bed (which helped a lot), and told Kristine it was time to call an ambulance. And that was how it all started.

Turns out we are very glad we did. In bed I could talk, but getting out to go 5 feet to the chair/bed the paramedics brought in put me in major distress and as it turns out, not able to breathe fast enough to keep up with my heart rate.

So, now I’ll speed up the details a bit to keep it on the shorter side. Turns out I was in afib and my heart rate maxed out at around 300 until I could lay down. They gave me some drugs for it and got back to sinus rhythm pretty quickly in the ER, so that was good.

Then came figuring out what was going on and it turns out I had fluid (that’s what I heard originally) around my heart. After an echocardiogram the Doctors decided to drain the liquid. Now when I said I heard originally I don’t mean it was something different, it’s just I did not equate fluid around my heart to be 2.5L of blood. 😳 They did say it could be blood, but 2.5L is a lot of fluid.

In the end it all went smoothly. Now, that’s not to say that procedure is a comfortable one, but I could feel my auxiliary pain impacted and then fade right away. Nausea is gone thus far, which was horrible this week. And just feeling so much better.

Now, it’s really hard to know exactly where this came from from me since I have a few risk factors, but the current theory is that chemo irritated the heart a bit and then allowed blood in because of the blood thinner I was on for clots (somewhat common with cancer, the clots that is).

On to the good news though, because I had to go off of the blood thinner they needed to check my legs for clots again, and this time it was negative. No clots! 🤙🏼 Tomorrow we’ll do another echocardiogram to check on the recovery process of the procedure (all seems tender but good in terms of how I am feeling) and then it should be time to go home. 😁 Another sign my blood at least is responding to treatments.

A wild ride without a doubt, but as I have said from the beginning, I’m going to get done whatever it takes to beat this thing and all it can throw at me in the process.

It’s those times we are not just tested, but tested over and over, that we must decide how badly we want it. In my case, my Hope will never fade, and as long as I have Hope nothing will stop me!

TEAMjeff!