Bringing Out the Big Guns

I try not to post here too often about my heart.

Not because it’s an intensely personal issue for me, exactly – it is, and it’s difficult to express how vulnerable I feel when someone asks me how my heart is doing these days. And not because it’s depression inducing – for me at least, I have always been what I call a realist. Working within my limitations is pretty difficult, but I’m willing to admit they exist, and I’m more than willing to look at the parts of my life that I still enjoy, that make life still worth living.

I try not to post about my heart too often because mostly it’s the same old-same old. It’s a chronic condition that isn’t expected to improve much on a day to day basis. I have good days and I have bad days. Most of my days are in the murky middle. It would get pretty tedious reading my list of symptoms every day.

Today, however, I’ve been doing a little research. My current cardiologist has decided he is out of his depth on my case and is referring me to a local neurologist and to a nationally renowned specialist for autonomic dysfunction. So I decided to check up a bit on Dr. Renowned. The professional literature dealing with my condition is pretty scarce, and a substantial portion of it has this man’s name on it.  His words are backed up by a world-wide client base (as well as his 9 month long waiting list, yikes!). According to his literature, I may actually have a chance of getting better someday. ~50% of the people he’s seen in his office end up being capable of going about their activities of daily living (eating, bathing, grooming, preparing food) without significant symptoms after 2-5 years of intensive, highly-individualized treatment. Those activities of daily living are things I struggle with every day at the moment, so as dismal as that might sound to some of you, it sounds pretty good to me.

So it’s not exactly a pot of gold, but it’s a damned sight prettier a prognosis than the one I had before, which was little to no hope of improvement during my lifetime.

It’ll probably be months or a year before I get to see Dr. Big-Guns Specialist, and years of therapy after that before I see major improvement, but at least I have some hope of getting a little piece of my life back someday.