Diet & Goals for Future, Unexpected Roadblocks

     Now we are 10 months into my recovery journey and I have come to realize that I really enjoyed getting back to where I was at before. Some of the things that I have encountered and struggled with was a healthy diet and goals for the future also one very big roadblock. First the diet, I was soo happy to be able to eat foods that prior to heart failure was a no go because I could not eat a lot and was not compatible with my body chemistry and the failing heart. Burritos are a big one here and I have always been a sucker for mexican food. As you know this food is not the healthiest with the amount of salt and portion size that prior, I could not get a lot of. Now with more movement and exercising I found that I could eat these items and not feel horrible but overtime I noticed that, weight was coming back.

     I got my weight down to 208 around the 8th month because I got off of higher doses of prednisone and the medications that limited the bloat and water retention from repairing the heart. So far I have had no rejection and all my vital signs have been looking great. But Christmas time came around and all those sweets and food made for company that was in my house caused me to eat too much and started to rise up in lbs. I realized that I need to more cognizant of what I was injecting.

     During the last 3 months I was also attending Cardiac Rehab which helped quite a lot in getting comfortable in recognizing how my body was feeling and improve my health. They did have a diet section which was informative but sadly no cooking because of COVID and that is what I needed the most.

     Than January 2022 came around and I contracted COVID and was really scared, I did not have extreme symptoms and was able to recover from this. When I informed my doctors that I was positive immediately they took me off my rejection meds and I went to receive an IV of monoclonal antibodies, and I will tell you that was a godsend. Felt better in less than 2 days but had to continue not taking my meds for another week.

     After that COVID scare however, something that too me was more nefarious my heart was in low rejection, this was caused from not taking my meds during that time recovering from COVID. Luckily restarting my TACRO and starting SIROLIMUS jump started the anti rejection meds again and in 2 weeks when I was tested again the rejection was not present and I blew a sigh of relief.