Rich Z (WebSlave)

Damn..... Seems like I have recently been turned into a "morning person".

The world just doesn't look right with sunshine coming from the wrong part of the horizon.

Did increased blood flow to my heart change me?

Or maybe it is the afternoon naps?

Originally Posted by WebSlave

Did increased blood flow to my heart change me?

Or maybe it is the afternoon naps?

Probably the better blood flow - oxygenated red cells, more energy. Also, you've both had catastrophic changes to your lives. Your normal sleep patterns have been disrupted due to stress, medications, demands on your time, etc.

Afternoon naps make me stay up too late at night, then I don't want to get up at 6:30-7:00 a.m., which is my normal time.

Heck, I went to bed last night at 1:00am. I NEVER go to bed that early! But I could not keep my head up while working on the computers in the den, so I just stopped fighting it.

Connie got up at 6:00am to take some pills and I was wide awake. I laid there for an hour trying to force myself to go back to sleep, but no go.

Anyway, I was feeling antsy again today, so took the hedge trimmer out and cut some sections to our walking path that was getting REAL overgrown. I think I was out there an hour or so. Enough for the battery to go dead, anyway.

So I came into the house and stripped all the wet clothes off, and damn if I don't have two lumpy bruises on my left thigh. I recall I was using my thighs to brace the trimmer as I was cutting through some sections, to give me a bit more leverage and take the strain off of my arms. I thought I might get a bruise, but didn't expect the lumps. Bruised muscles, perhaps?

This blood thinner crap is going to be the death of me yet.

Speaking of which, I finally heard back from my cardiologist's nurse today about that Ramipril prescription. She said he really doesn't know how much potassium fruits will be providing to my system and doubted that would have any negative effects with the medication. So we left it that I should take the medication, and just look for negative symptoms and if any, stop taking it. Gee... Well, I would say the easy bruising with the blood thinner and aspirin is a negative effect, but I don't think they want me to stop taking them. I really don't like that one little bit. It makes me feel that my entire vascular system is just weak and feeble.

But in any event, most of the path looks pretty good now, so Connie can walk through it more easily when she wants to. She is trying to get more exercise each day, so I really wanted to get that path cleaned up. Makes for a pretty good walk because the minor elevation changes give you a bit of a workout. It's not all just completely flat land, and from what I measured from the garage and back again along the path is about a half mile. So a pretty good walk.

Damn... wonder how purple those lumps on my thigh are going to get....

Ramipril relaxes blood vessels, and lowers blood pressure. My mom took it, and I didn't see any bruises on her. Are you taking any other thinners besides the aspirin? Your bruising seems excessive.

I am not taking the Ramipril yet. I wanted to speak to the cardiologist about the dietary potassium in fruits possibly being an issue first. He is prescribing this to me (1.25mg tablets, 1 per day) because he said it would help speed up the healing of those damaged tissues in my heart from the heart attack.

I will start taking it tomorrow. I will be watching it closely in case it drops my blood pressure too much as well as the laundry list of other side effects I have read about. Maybe in November when the first of the citrus will be ripening, I can get off of that stuff anyway.

The blood thinner I have been taking ever since the heart attack on Memorial Day is Prasugrel, 10mg tablet once per day. I did tell my cardiologist about the ease of bruising and he claimed it was normal. Everything I have read online pretty much says that a blood thinner and aspirin are pretty much a requirement after a coronary stent placement. Blood thinner for a year, and aspiring pretty much for the rest of my life.

I am also taking Atorvastatin (80 mg, once per day) for cholesterol control, even though my yearly blood work results haven't shown that to be a problem. But I guess SOMETHING caused my coronary arteries to close up.

I believe most doctors just like to prescribe medications. Not sure many of them really pay close attention to the side effects and the interactions with diet and other medications and supplements. I did take a list of the OTC supplements I am taking to him, so he does have that list on file.

Basically they just ask you if you are allergic to anything, and that is that.

I don't see the lumps on my left thigh getting any worse looking, but they are tender to the touch. I have been using that extended hedge trimmer the same way I did today for a few years now, without having this sort of problem doing so. Heck, in the past I could have whacked myself hard with a ball peen hammer and not gotten a bruise from it. So this is really irking me.

Darn, I don't think I am going to make it to even 1 am tonight. Between getting up early and then working on the path, I can feel the bed calling my name. I didn't have a nap today, so maybe that is why. Connie and I took a brisk walk along the path I had partially cleared after dinner. Not sure if I will work on it again tomorrow or not. Maybe I should give myself a day or two between the yard work. But Thursday and Friday are going to be tied up taking Connie for her tests. Even though tests don't take too long, they do tend to tie up the entire day.

Just happened to glance at the main page and noticed the thread title I had just posted that was supposed to say "Do you think I might get some rain?"

Well, the way the text had gotten truncated, it appears I was thinking about doing a REAL stress test on my heart.....

Ha ha. That and the temporary avatar. lol

Originally Posted by nickolasanastasiou

Ha ha. That and the temporary avatar. lol

I didn't even think of that aspect.... Would have been kind of contradictory, wouldn't it?

For those of you who don't know what Nick and I are referring to, a couple of nights ago I was really feeling down in the dumps and decided to change my avatar to reflect this state of emotion I was going through. I found one that seemed appropriate and changed it late at night. The following morning, when I looked at it, well, it actually seemed obscene if looked at from a different perspective. Suspecting that others might see it in that light, too, I reverted back to my original avatar.

That image is attached below, for anyone interested in the "backstory".

Thank you, for sharing that story with us.