My Story: Ed and congestive heart failure

Being in relatively good shape, Ed was shocked when he was diagnosed with systolic heart failure. Learn how extreme fatigue led him to talk to his doctor and hear what he wants people to know about this condition.

Transcript

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[MUSIC PLAYING] I'm 68 years old, never had any kind of health problems. Then one day I got a shocking diagnosis in actually March

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of 2019, where I began to get very, very tired. I was very fatigued.

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And I just had no energy whatsoever. I went to my regular physician. She did a series of tests. But at the end of it all, she kind of trended towards,

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I think you may be having a problem with your heart. We just have to keep an eye on that. And I didn't expect to hear that at all. Good Friday of 2019, I woke up in the morning,

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and I was having tremendous heart fluttering, I guess is the best word that I can come up for with it. I was having a real difficult time breathing.

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And I had never had any difficulty with breathing before. So my wife and I went to the ER. And they admitted me into the ER.

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And I was rather quickly diagnosed as having systolic heart failure. So it was kind of unexpected to me, and very

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frightening to hear that. The result of my not tending to it can end up being sudden cardiac death.

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That has a tendency to get your attention really quick. The left ventricle of my heart chamber is not beating properly.

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It turns out that I was actually operating at about 18% volume, where the normal is 55% volume.

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18% is very low. They think that my heart problems came as a result of a viral attack. They recommended that I get a implanted cardiac device put

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in, a CRT-D, which essentially is a pacemaker, and a defibrillator, and a cardiac regulator.

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Once that went in, I began to start to feel dramatically better, much better than I had in a very long time.

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I do continue to take regular medications. Good. There's no doubt that the medications and recommended

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therapies that the doctor has are critical to me. It's not something that I can just simply let go off to the side.

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[INAUDIBLE], come on. I have a relatively new relationship after my late wife passed away.

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And then I met Sheila, my new wife. We have a great relationship. I have a great new family down here in Georgia.

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As long as I continue to do my job, which is medications, and exercise, and paying attention to what I'm doing, hopefully I can go