A friend writes to remind me that I haven’t updated here in a couple of weeks.
Don’t worry: In this case, no news is good news.
On some dimensions I’m better: in particular, my voice is near normal (just slightly hoarse) at times, though it comes and goes, and I’m limited in how much volume I can produce. Physical energy seems slightly improved: I’ve now walked the mile home from work (slightly uphill) three times, which I certainly couldn’t have done even three weeks ago.
It turns out that Dr. Weiss and Dr. Tharaon didn’t actually disagree about my going back on isosorbide and hydrazaline; Dr. Weiss got the impression that Dr. Tharaon was recommending that instead of Entresto rather than in addition to it. He has no objection to the combination.
I tried it once, about a week ago, with bad results: half an hour after taking I felt dazed and sleepy, and headed right to bed in the middle of the day. Today I’m experimenting with a single dose of the isosorbide; I’m tolerating it well, and (with a hefty dose of hot chocolate) it does seem to have made me somewhat more energetic. I’ll try one dose a day for a while to see how it goes.
The cough is still annoying, but a little big less frequent than before; still productive, though. If it doesn’t improve, we’ll do another chest X-ray to make sure the Zithromax killed the pneumonia.
Big problem now is sleep: occasionally I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep for a couple of hours. Even when that doesn’t happen, and even if I go to bed before midnight, I’m sleeping extremely late. Today, for example, I woke up at 10, still felt drowsy, turned over and went back to sleep, didn’t wake up until 1 p.m. Thursday I didn’t bother to set an alarm because my first meeting wasn’t until 1:30, and was started when a phone call woke me up at 12:45.
Scheduled for a (yeeechh!!) colonoscopy toward the end of the month, which is the last test I need to get cleared for a transplant. Just got the instructions in the mail, and it appears that the process is significantly less annoying than it was the last time I did it: first dose of that awful sludge you have to drink isn’t until 6pm the evening before the test. Good news: at my age, this is the last routine colonoscopy; the guideline is one every 10 years, but not after 75.
Another potential donor has emerged, which gets the candidate pool back to three. Still hoping to get the job done in February, but nothing is certain.Still cheerful, comfortable, and reasonably productive. More when I know more. If there’s any bad news, I’ll make sure it gets posted here, so take silence as encouraging.
Sounds good, but what I really want to know is, did you follow up with that person who said she liked your new voice? I feel like the audience was left hanging.