I know I haven’t put up an update in a while, I’ve been feeling sick a lot lately and busy trying to keep up with cardiac rehab & I also just started school last week. It’s my first semester back since receiving Lilo so we will see how this goes. I’m expecting good things of course and for it to go smoothly.
It’s been an eventful few weeks to say the least, I was hospitalized twice last month. I’ve been having these excessive nose bleeds for WEEKS now; I lost a good amount of blood while also losing 6 lbs. which caused me to feel very weak, nauseous, and having a lose in appetite. This also caused Lilo’s alarm to set off because my L/min dropped to 1.4-2.6 L/min. (The normal ranges from 3.4-4.6 L/min) but luckily I was already admitted to the hospital at this time so the LVAD team took care of that so my parents wouldn’t have to!
I stayed 4 days for the blood clotting (epistaxis) in my nose along with an ovarian cyst rupture. With the medication I take, it causes me to bruise/bleed easily, so they checked my hemoglobin levels and got a CBC (complete blood count) check along with a bunch of other tests/scans. Everything came back normal, thank God! Because it is a side effect of taking the medication, this isn’t something that would be considered abnormal.
They had an ENT (Ear Nose Throat) doctor come in and perform a nasal packing in my nose with 5 dissolvable gauzes…which by the way was VERY painful. The purpose of that was to absorb the bleeding and the clots. The bleeding did stop for a short period of time while the packing was still there, but once that dissolved, you can only guess what happened. So I now spend my days walking around EVERYWHERE with gauze stuck up my nose. At this point, I don’t care if people stare at me, I’d much rather have my nose packed than to be walking around dripping blood all over the place or running down my face.(Believe it or not it has happened before.)
My doctors said if the bleeding continues then they will have to go inside and preform a nose catheterization that will seal the blood vessels and help build scar tissue to prevent any further nose bleeding. I can’t say that I’m looking forward to this, but I know it needs to be done! On a brighter note…the good thing in all of this is that I got to see my McDreamy nurse crush, so it’s all good!
SO happy my Lilo is back to her norm and giving me life!
#LifeWithLilo #LiloIsGoodNow #LVADProblems