Well it was coming like a freight train at me...

My heart condition Atrial Ahrrythmia is getting out of control. For years Doctors have been telling me to lose weight or get severe physical health problems and bang here they are. There are only 2 choices for me neither is preferable. The one I didn't choose is to just stay in Ahrrythmia and take more meds hoping they keep me stable (already told the chances of winning the lottery is better. The choice I DID decide on is to try the cardiac shock again and start on a drug that has far better success at keeping people in normal sinus rhythem but after 4 years has some terrible side effects like thyroid, lung, and liver disease. The doctor swears that I'll be monitored and the first sign of trouble they will stop the drug.

Now with both options comes the dreaded mandatory diet. I am advised to get barriatric surgery and informed the doctor that Unitedhealthcare will not cover any type of weight loss surgery. I can only hope that John does get the new job as the benefits package is supposedly first rate.

Home again, home again jiggity jig!

Gods that was an awful experience. I'm still dealing with the after effects of the stroke (that's what we're calling it) but i'm already about 80% healed. I'm sure it's this last 20% that will be the bitch. John is killing himself trying to balance the dogs, work, me and more work and it's killing him. I feel so bad but I can't even go up and down stairs without help so walking the dogs is out of the question.

The reason i'm home so early is that i nearly had another heart attack while under the "care" of Manor Care and had to be rushed to the hospital. While there I insisted they re-evaluate me and they decided I could go home with out-patient therapy. Being home is stressful in it's own way but I can deal with all that.

Tomorrow It's back to more frequent posting and the tale of my very first date.

It's been a while

My Health issues continue. A few weeks ago I started showing signs of having a stroke. My left side became weak and useless, my speech started to slur and I couldn't walk. John took me to the hospital where I was getting worse, after a CT scan and an MRI they had decided I had no stroke damage and they think my symptoms are insulin based. It seems I was taking too much insulin but it wasn't showing on a daily basis, it was a slow build up that caused nerve damage that mimicked a stroke.

I'm in a rehab hospital now learning how to walk (at the moment I need a walker) my left arm has regained mobility but not fine motor control. My speech comes and goes I'm understandable but I sometimes have to think hard to make my self understood. I will probably be here a few more weeks for physical and occupational therapy I might be out before Yule.
I'm trying to remain positive but no one knows how much use I'll get from my left side and I'm worried that I'll be a huge burden on John, he already is burning the candle at both ends with the animals and visiting me, sometimes I'm more worried for him than for me.

I'm still alive.

3 weeks ago I had a life altering experience... I had a heart attack.
It was minor and they didn't even feel a need to put a stint in my artery but it shows how bad my heart is.
It was always rumored that heart disease ran in my father's side of the family. Granddad died from a heart issue (i'm not sure what) and I think my dad had heart problems but that's not how he died so I'm not sure.
What I do know is back in the 1990's I was diagnosed with Cardiomegaly, an enlarged heart. What they didn't explain to me at the time is it's almost impossible to have it at my young age. It wasn't until this heart attack that the doctors told me it's probably a genetic abnormality so thanks again family, our freaking mutant genes screw me again.
Recovery has been normal I guess but I have a cold that just won't go away and it makes me miserable.

John and I now have iPhone 4s' and we love them. Siri is a hoot. I asked her to open the pod bay doors and she told me she couldn't do that. *giggle*.

What's up with the bear right now.

I decided recently that I'm needing to change my life if I'm ever going to survive my health conditions. My Congestive Heath Failure has been acting up for weeks now making it just a bit harder to breath and sapping me of what little endurance I have. The reason it's acting up is I have nothing to do but sit on my ass all day and surf the web or play games. So i'm making changes starting with getting out of the house more. to do that I'm picking up some of my wants and desires that I have not allowed myself to explore with any gusto.
One is the fact that I'm a nudist but have not been to any nude events in ages. So over the weekend i met up with the Philadelphia Radical faeries ( a gay men's social/pagan group) and went naked with them for a while. and that just spurred me on so I joined www.truenudists.com and I'm meeting some really wonderful people there. Now don't worry i'm not going to be flashing my flesh on this site so you can all open your eyes now you bitches. This will get me out of the house and active with people doing something fun and different. 
it's also something I can do anywhere should we get the position in Phoenix. 


I'm also looking into learning more Native American medicine. While I'm not genetically an Indian I have a deep draw to their ways and cultures. Being Two-spirit as they call gay people, i'm very drawn to that particular magic and want to understand it better so I may be of use to my community as I have always know I would be.

Sorry to have been away.

But there hasn't really been anything I wanted to talk about happening in my life.
I'm struggling to use the CPAP machine all night long. nothing I try makes it comfortable for me.

John had his 60th birthday last week and being out of work I couldn't get him anything to celebrate and that made me very depressed.
Right as I type this John is on the phone being interviewed by 5 people at the college he hopes to be working at in Arizona. Oh how i hope he gets the job so we can escape the black hole that Philadelphia has become for us. Not that I expect moving to create a miracle but at least it will shake us up and out of our ruts.

Oh I did start Testosterone shots a few weeks ago and man has it made a difference. Guys as you get older make sure to have Testosterone tests done so you can avoid the health problems I have had from low testosterone.

Update: John did well on his first of 3 or 4 interviews. He was told that will make a decision in about 3 weeks.

CPAP. My new sleeping companion and tormentor.

I finally received my CPAP on Monday and it's been an experience. Monday night I wore it to bed and woke up with the mask placed nicely on the unit so I can only suppose that I must have taken it off at some point as it wouldn't have fallen off onto the unit itself.
Ginger hated it at first and got barky for a while and even now gives it the "evil eye".
Last night I slept for about 3 hours with it on and woke up exhausted and in a pool of sweat. I can only think it's because I breath heavier with the mask on  and my body reacted like I was running a marathon. I decided to keep it off the rest of the night as I was feeling a bit too drained to go through that again.

So far however I haven't taken a nap yet so it must be working but I am getting tired now so I'm signing off and laying down with the unit on in case I fall asleep.

To sleep, perchance to rest... that is the question.

I've known I had sleep apnea for many years. but it's gotten really bad in the last year or so and I figured it was time to have a sleep study done. I had one on Easter Sunday night and it was awful. I couldn't sleep between all the wires attached to me and the ultra soft bed making my back ache.

They were able to get me to sleep for about 2 hours and had enough information to tell I stop breathing 90 TIMES IN A HOUR. I don't even get a full minute of sleep before choking. They will be setting me up with a CPAP machine and hopefully I'll be able to get some actual rest like I haven't had in years.

Health update 4/12/11

I went to the doctors yesterday and my heart seems to be doing fine. It's fully back in rhythm and I've had not rev-ups. The Warfarin they have me on is a bit too much so I'm taking less (so I don't get a nose bleed and exsanguinate).
My weight is getting out of control though. I'm 6'2" and 312 pounds. I need to drop a good 100 lbs. I'm hoping that with the move I'll have better food choices (not having a kitchen sucks) and will drop some of this excess asap.

Of spider bites and idiots on parade.

Well as if I didn't need any MORE reasons to have spiders it appears that my recent bout of Cellulitis was actually an infected spider bite. It must have happened on the Tuesday we were in Provincetown because even though I didn't see the bug or feel the bite I remember having heart palpitations and heavy sweating that night and the next day my ankle was headed to the size of an elephants foot.
After our travels and my self imposed torment so that we could see the places we were thinking of starting the commune on.
Well all we really did was allow me to get sicker so by the time we got home I was honestly ready to go to the E.R. I had already had an apt with my doctor the next day and John wanted me to wait another day and see what the doctor said. The doctor looked at my leg and called me an idiot. I couldn't defend myself because I had been an idiot, I put John's needs before my own health like I tend to do. I have a long history of this, there is even a time when we had a fuck buddy over and I was so sick I stayed in one of the spare rooms while they had fun. Unfortunately I was so sick I started to projectile vomit and started choking on it and when I called out weakly for John's help he was too busy and load to hear my calls even though I was just a door away. But the past is the past and I really need to forgive both him and myself for that.

Once on the antibiotics and (really good) pain killers I started to recover but I was (am still) weak and unable to balance myself but as the swelling started to subside I could see were the twin puncture's had filled with the infection and were now oozing puss. I know enough about first aid to bandage my wounds and use a ichthammol ointment to help draw out the toxins. so as of today I'm doing pretty well but I still have some of the poison in me and really want to squish every spider I see but I'm a good man and will hold back my wrath... for NOW.

How Reiki saved my life and has me walking today.

Back in 2000 John's "father" (the reason for the quotes is that he was not much of one) passed away. My history with the man was the 7 years I knew him was the longest 3 decades of my life. Anyway...
I had just started a new Job and already I had to take off for the funeral of a man I honestly hated. While John and I were cleaning out his home I started to have back pain, nothing new to me as I have a very bad back, then I started getting fevers and cold symptoms, and chalked it up to being the dead of winter and I had caught a cold or a flu.
As time passed the symptoms got worse and I started missing work as I couldn't sit up straight or walk very well. The fevers were getting worse and I was getting concerned. I started going to a chiropractor by the name of Dr. Payne (I should have known from the name). Payne was worried something more was wrong with me then just a simple slipped disc and wanted me to get an MRI but I had no insurance and was honestly scared as I was loosing the ability to use my left leg. Yeah, I said it. I was loosing my ability to use my left leg, it was locked in a sitting position and I couldn't get it to relax. Now any SANE person would have gone to the ER but I've always been a head-in-the-sand kind of guy when it comes to my health and didn't want to go. John for what it's worth didn't want to force me to do anything I didn't want to do and, like a moron, didn't insist I go.

3 months had passed by the time I got a ride to the Doctors office and when they saw me the doctor honestly thought i was going to die on his exam table. My blood pressure was 80/40 and I was literally ash grey. The admitted me immediately and ran a battery of tests. It seems I had a massive infection in my blood stream. They couldn't tell me how it got there but one of the ways made some sense to me. A pimple.

Yes a pimple nearly killed me. It had developed on my lower back just under my belt and was terribly painful, refusing to pop and then one day it was gone and I assumed it had popped on it's own. It must have popped into my flesh and festered there. Now while I still thought I had a strained back a friend of ours who was a massage student had attempted to do a procedure on me the "opens up your spine and relieves pressure on your discs" the infection was given access to my spinal cord and I entered a world of hurt.

So there I am in the hospital receiving mega dosages of antibiotics and feeling foolish that I almost died. The doctors had told me I was 6 to 8 hours from my body giving out from the massive infection. They took me into surgery two days after I was admitted because they had to get me to a point where I could survive the procedure and the doctor said "Mr. Leven I don't want to give you false hope, Most likely you will need a walker or some other form of assistance to walk again. The chance of you walking again on your own is slim" and even in my drugged out state I remember telling him I would do a Jig for him in a few weeks. He didn't smile or anything.

It was going to be weeks in the hospital with tubes in an open incision in my back draining out the infection (I actually popped when they made it and a nurse passed out) and i was unable to get out of bed without assistance but I just couldn't use a bed pan, so I decided that I would practice my Reiki on myself. Hours at a time I channeled and it seemed to take on a life of it's own, The energy just flowed even when I wasn't concentrating on it you could even feel it in the room around me. My nurses would come in on their breaks and ask if it was OK to sit and relax, they all said there was this energy I was giving off that made them feel rested and peaceful I told them what I was doing and a few of them knew of Reiki and the others became believers. I started to heal at a rate that was way above normal and my strength came back very quick as well. I was able to get out of bed and walk with a walker within days of my procedure but only for short periods of time. after two weeks I saw my doctor in the hall and he seemed alarmed I was up and walking without a nurse along with me for support and I pushed the walker to one side and started shuffling my feet, he asked me what I was doing and I said "This is the best Jig I have ever been able to do." He started laughing and the nurses all seemed to be astounded he was doing it.

By the end of the 3 weeks I was in the Reading Hospital I had a grown strong enough to walk on my own but needed physical therapy as i was still really unsteady and needed the walker so they sent me to rehab. While there I continued the Reiki on myself and the nurses all remarked how peaceful my room seemed. As before I explained the Reiki and I continued to prove I was healing very fast. I was released from the rehab almost 2 weeks earlier than they estimated i would and walking on my own with no assistance needed. It was another few months at home with a pic line ( a semipermanent IV tube in my arm leading directly into my heart) and twice daily antibiotic injections but I'm fine now except for a weakened immune system and a foot long scar up my back.
The doctors gave me a chance of dieing on the table with a 80% chance of either not walking at all or at minimum needing a walker and here I am. I blame it on the Reiki and the love of my husband.