It's been a tiring and an interesting 7 days between posts.
On Monday morning I went into the ER due to left arm pain and numbness, accompanied by weird "hiccups" in my chest area. It started on Saturday evening, but my vitals were good, however Monday morning my Blood Pressure went crazy high.
They ruled out heart attack Monday morning with an EKG and a troponin test, they ran labs, and did some imaging. And, even went as far as to say that they believed the discomfort I am feeling on my left side must be musculoskeletal, however my triglycerides were a little high, and they wanted me to get additional testing done with a follow-up appointment, because there is some concern about possible coronary disease.
Today, I have a follow-up appointment with a family practice physician that specializes in cardiology.
I am feeling nervous, and plain scared. I generally feel pretty impartial to my health care at this point-- affordable health care has not been a consistent or reliable thing in my adult life. "Oh, look at me! The millionaire who goes to see doctors!"
Anyways, I have been looking up ways to lower triglycerides as a proactive measure to help alleviate any future potential heart problems. It looks like if I even lose 12lbs of my current weight, I'd be looking at quite the improvement in this area. Obviously, I am going to do my appointment, find out what is wrong, and be an active member in the plan for correcting anything that may need correcting. In the meantime, it gives me some level of control in the situation knowing I can do something on my own.
On a side note, after my nutrition class this last fall term we discovered our sodium was too high, and our potassium too low, so, at the end of November, beginning of December we started actively working on lowering sodium intake and increasing the potassium in our diets. My labs showed that both potassium and sodium were within standards-- with sodium being on the lower side of within those standards, and potassium being on the higher side of those standards.
It felt good to see that improvement.
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