Don\u2019t worry, I won\u2019t take you back to my birth, even though that\u2019s when it technically all began. ?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ll start in 2001, before 9\/11. I hadn\u2019t been to a doctor in roughly 10 years, and hadn\u2019t been to one regularly<\/em> in way more than that. Lois was seeing a dermatologist regularly. She really liked him, and encouraged me to see him as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I did (who doesn\u2019t listen to their wife?). After examining me, he strongly<\/strong> suggested that I see a primary care physician as well. He highly recommended a cardiologist, who was also a primary care physician, who happened to have a practice on the same floor next door to the dermatology practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I took his advice. For some background, at the time I weighed something like 265 pounds. It was by no means my all-time high, but it was wildly over-the-top nonetheless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I saw the cardiologist he gave me a thorough exam, drew blood (and the other stuff<\/em>). At the end of the appointment he said: \u201cBTW, I have no fat patients!\u201d, which I understood very clearly meant that I better lose weight if I wanted to continue seeing him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When my blood test came back, my cholesterol was high (not dangerously, but enough to warrant the talk<\/strong>). He wanted me to immediately take Lipitor, offering me samples that he had in the office. He said that if I tolerated it well enough, he\u2019d prescribe it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I asked if I could try diet and exercise before taking a statin, and while he agreed, he told me that most people don\u2019t stick with either, and that only 25% of the world\u2019s population can control cholesterol levels via diet and exercise. He told me to come back in two months and if my level hadn\u2019t dropped, he\u2019d insist on putting me on Lipitor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For two months, I was religious about eating healthy and exercising (or at least what at the time I believed was healthy eating). My cholesterol dropped significantly and was below the level that any doctor would prescribe a statin, so at a minimum, it proved that I was in the lucky 25% that could control it via diet and exercise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He scheduled me to return for a Stress Echo test (that\u2019s where you walk on a treadmill to stress your body, then immediately have a full echocardiogram exam). It was brutal. While I lost weight during those months, I was still very overweight and the stress test was awful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every time I tried to run<\/em> on the treadmill, he\u2019d admonish me to walk as fast as I could (even though I was huffing and puffing and obviously couldn\u2019t<\/strong> keep up with the accelerating pace and angle).<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the echo exam, I got the bad news (thereby considering this the beginning<\/strong> of my Health Journey<\/em>). I had a Bicuspid Aortic Valve<\/strong> (a birth defect that causes the aortic valve to only have two functioning flaps instead of three).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition, likely due to the valve, but possibly also due to my weight and previous lack of exercise, I had an enlarged ascending aorta (technically, an aneurysm<\/strong>). It wasn\u2019t dangerous yet, but would need to be monitored regularly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He told me that day that eventually, with no way to predict when, I\u2019d need a valve replacement (for sure), and possibly the need to repair the ascending aorta as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since then, I get tested regularly, and the story will unfold in future posts…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Don\u2019t worry, I won\u2019t take you back to my birth, even though that\u2019s when it technically all began. ? I\u2019ll start in 2001, before 9\/11. I hadn\u2019t been to a doctor in roughly 10 years, and hadn\u2019t been to one regularly in way more than that. Lois was seeing a dermatologist regularly. She really liked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":""},"categories":[1401,2],"tags":[1402,1379],"class_list":["post-14417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-2","tag-health","tag-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14418,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14417\/revisions\/14418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}