The State I'm In

So, today is the big one.  A year since my diagnosis. Many people wouldn't want to think about it but for me it's a happy day.  Hell I'm still here for one and I'm not feeling too bad at all, so why not celebrate?

When I was first diagnosed it was obviously a massive shock and I'm not ashamed to say I was rather worried about what it all meant.  The term 'Heart Failure' evokes so many images, none of them good, and naturally it makes you think that it is something that is going to destroy your life as you know it.  I think the reason for this is two-fold. 

Firstly, it's the name Heart Failure.  To most people (myself included a year ago) this suggests the heart isn't working, and that it is likely to stop at any time.  It makes you really look at yourself and reminds you of your own mortality.  Of course, as you come to terms with the fact you have heart failure you slowly start to come to terms with what it actually means, both in a general sese and more specifically to you.  I now know that I'm not likely to die of it anytime soon.  The failure bit of 'heart failure' just means my heart isn't working as well as it should.  Yes, it's damaged. No, it won't fully recover, but it's not a death sentence and is something I can manage with the help of my medication, my health care team and by me taking charge of how I live my life.

Secondly, awareness.  As I've said previously, there just isn't the awareness of heart failure out there.  rarely do we hear about heart failure unless someone famous dies from it and even then what we do hear is often skewed and innacurate. When George Michael passed away, it was widely reported that he had heart failure and that he had put on loads of weight (along with the disgraceful papperazzi photos in the more shit newspapers like the Sun, the Daily Mail etc).  Of course, I know from experience that the weight gain and bloating is due to fluid retention as blood isn't pumped around your body properly leading to fluid not getting to your kidneys in order to be passed out when you have a pee.  Exactly what happened to me leading to over 20 litres of fluid setting in my body all the ay from my feet to my chest cavity.  Of course, this leads to other complications due to it compressing your other internal organs which in my case (and I imagine other peoples) meaning it all starts shutting down.  This then leads to it being hard to diagnose initially.  In my case, because my liver was shutting down it seemed like I had liver damage.  All better now though.

We see regular things in the media keeping cancer very much in the public eye (and rightly so), but very little for other conditions which just seems wrong.  I'm sure it's not just heart failure that this affects but it's vital that people are made aware of the conditions to either help raise money for charities that support research or those affected by them or to just raise public awareness so they can identify symptoms and seek treatment earlier.  For me, the work that Pumping Marvellous do is invaluable and has given me a massive amount of support and  encouragement over the past year.

So, a year on, where am I and what does the future hold?  Well, generally I'm good and don't notice any real difference from before I was ill.  I'm not really stopped from doing things I did before, in fact I'd say I'm actually able to do far more than I could before heart failure.  Giving up smoking and drinking means my body is generally in better shape and coupled with the runnning and going to the gym, I'm more active than I probably ever have been before.  Yes I get tired more easily but it's nothing that really hampers me in my day to day life.  I've got various things planned for the next few months and beyond.  Some of them revolve around helping raising the awareness I mentioned earlier of which I'll be writing about over the next few months. I've also signed up for a running course with my local running club.  I feel like I need a more social aspect to my running.  I do love going out early in the morning before work and my Sunday run but I want to push myself further and doing so with other novice runners sounds just about right.  I'm planning on a run over in Malta next year too which should be fun (if a little warm), but no, I'm not planning on doing marathons.  Maybe 10k though.

So there we have it.  I'll be raising a non alcoholic beer later to celebrate my Heartiversary (Thanks Sam from PM for the term!)