Steven's Posts

It's been a while. Surgery, but not heart or aneurysm. Had bile duct surgery and it took a bit to get back on my feet, then CoVid and complications. But doing okay. That said, well, things are mostly stable with the heart and I'm plugging ahead. Tonight I am opening a one-man show of all things. Mr. Charles Dickens will be telling his story "A Christmas Carol". The missus made me do it, she's arranged the music for it. I will admit that it's taking a lot, like A LOT of energy to do this and I crash for a day in between shows, but hey, it's living. Know that you all are inspirations to me and I really appreciate this community. Happy Holidays to all.

Non heart-related surgery behind me, maybe. I had complications and had to go back in. Complications from laproscopic surgery? Yeah, well, bleeding. Oh well. I gotta tell you that I appreciate the recovery room staff. My oh my. And I'm going to be less scared when I do have the heart surgery. Had a great anaesthetist who talked you through everything that was about to happen. Made it less mystifying. Gotta say though that intubation is a female dog.

Eeentersting... Going in for gall bladder surgery tomorrow "on call". Surgeon is a nice guy and said "Well, I can do this elective and have you wait a few weeks, or we can get it done now." Now it is. But here's the interesting part. Since changing my diet slightly to remove fats my BP has dropped significantly, like 15 points drop. It isn't what I'm NOT eating, (eggs and cheese), but what I AM eating. I used to have a bowl of Yogurt with fruit in the morning. Now it's oatmeal with the fruit. I have substituted a lot more lentils and stuff for cheeses and eggs. Since I'm the cook I get to say what I eat. I make this really tasty (and I'm not just saying that) lentil patty that we used to use for barbecue hamburgers, now it's like a falafel patty on toast. Problem is that the missus can't eat lentils, needs high fat dairy and well it's like "Jack Sprat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean..." Both lentils and oatmeal have compounds that do tend to lower BP. I thought I was doing everything right recently and still BP was high, manageably high, but my daily average is now 110 over 70 and that's wild. So when people say that small changes can't make a difference, they can! Oh and my untrained eye at the CT scan of the aneurysm shows almost a 1mm growth this year. Not fast but not slow either.