A Sixty-Something Woman With Coronary Artery Disease

 Where in the heck has the first half of 2021 disappeared to! I just re-read my last post from January and had to laugh. Turns out it WAS the steroids messing with my triglycerides. Had a lipid panel done in March and my total cholesterol was down to 102 from 170 in June 2020 (before my “adventure “ started) with triglycerides down to 132 from 245 while in the steroids! My total cholesterol level last June was wasn’t nearly high enough to get me diagnosed with high cholesterol (under 200 is “desirable” and you’re considered “borderline” up to 239), but apparently for me, 170 is too high. Lesson learned — don’t put too much stock in comparing your numbers to the charts of normal ranges. Clearly avoiding oil is is working. I’ve done a few things that are really helping me stay on track. I read constantly and will add a list of recommended books and cookbooks to the blog soon. I signed up for the Forks Meal Planner mostly because I love the help with the grocery list. But so many of the

 I can't believe I'm writing this, but I actually talked to Dr. Esselstyn on the phone yesterday! Here's what happened:  At my last cardiologist visit, I asked her to put in an order to get labs on my cholesterol levels. Surprised I had to ask, but my sense is that the conventional docs have so much faith in the statins that they don't even bother to check. The results showed a total cholesterol of 112, which was up a bit from my results in October. LDL was down, though, and both my cardiologist and PCP had already told me that LDL is the only thing they look at. I'm not buying that. The main thing I was/am concerned about is that my triglycerides went from 101 in October to 245. Even though I know I haven't been doing a perfect job eliminating oil from my diet, my thoughts immediately went to the preferred idea that maybe something else was affecting my triglycerides. After all, I'm on steroids (still) and I like to blame them for everything. So I'm in

 I'm feeling good these days, but I've had a seriously troublesome complication from my heart surgery that pretty much wiped out my productivity for the past six weeks. I have Dressler's syndrome and had to have surgery to have a catheter installed to drain the fluid buildup around my left lung. It took a trip in an ambulance and two additional hospital admissions before we got on the catheter idea, and it has been a big help. I'd hoped to only need it for a few weeks, but when my cardiologist tried to step down the amount of Prednisone I was taking, I had a setback, so I'm guessing it will be at least another month. In the grand scheme of things it's not a huge deal, but it's a pretty good example of why avoiding heart surgery in the first place is an excellent plan.  I've only had one metabolic panel done since I started trying to eliminate the oil in earnest. On 10/18, my totally cholesterol was 90! My goal is 150, so that number is truly remarkable.

I have a friend who is savvy about health and has given me good advice in the past about various conditions my husband and I have struggled with, so when I recently received a note from her saying, "I'm curious about why you chose Esselstyn's diet - it's so extreme," I took her question seriously. The simple answer to this question is that I'm on this diet because Dr. Esselstyn's research, which is backed up by an incredible amount of data from other studies, has shown remarkable results reversing heart disease with a whole-food, plant-based diet, and that's exactly what I want.  The discovery that I had 100% blockage in one of my coronary arteries came as quite a surprise, since I honestly thought my vegan diet would protect me from any such outcome. I knew that my cholesterol level was at the high end of the the "normal" range (my total cholesterol was 191 when I first started seeking treatment for my angina), and this concerned me, but I d

Been home since Monday. It’s Thursday now, and I think I may finally have an effective strategy for handling the pain meds. Yesterday I received a visit from a home health nurse who is the first person who ever suggested that I might be able to manage my reaction to the opioids by taking them with food. She also suggested that I try taking half a dose if I was still skeptical (I was). I did that last night, this morning and mid-day today and it worked like a charm. I have a no-salt rice cake (sounds awful, I know, but they’re good with strawberry jam on them) that I can eat along with 1/2 a Tramadol and feel no nausea or dizziness. What a breakthrough! Speaking of the visiting nurse, it was a strange experience to have someone introduce herself to me on my doorstep, step inside and immediately ask me to stand on the scale she carried in with her. It was a challenge to my natural stand-off-ishness, but I’m glad I got over myself. Not everything she said was useful, but she really did he

 Fingers crossed. My stupid intolerance for codeine (it makes me nauseous) could possibly interfere with going home today. I can tolerate the codeine as long as I take an anti-nausea drug along with it, but the anti-nausea medication interferes with heart rhythms, and so they won’t send that home with me. And I do still need the pain meds. I still have a bit of fluid in my lungs, and as long as I have pain, I’m not breathing fully, and the lung congestion could get worse. So I just took the new painkiller, Tramadol, and if I manage not to get nauseous, I can go home. The one downside is that I can’t take alcohol with it. I was really looking forward to a glass of wine.  My first piece of advice is about the painkillers. For reasons that should be clear from the above, I don’t like them. But , after surgery, you really need them. The very odd thing is that the nurses keep asking me IF I want them. In fact, they ask me every 4 or 5 hours if I want the Tylenol ( the correct answer is, Yes