Re: edema/Heidi

[Guest guest]

Heidi,

I missed your post on the 'rocker' exercises for edema. Would you mind posting

the info again?

I have been having increasing problems with edema. I have also had a terrible

time with being short of breath since the end of June. I have never really had

a problem with being short of breath until then. It started the day before I

ended up going to the ER with what I thought was a panc attack but I had a 102

temp and pain in both flanks. They did blood cultures and they came back

positive. So, I first assumed the new shortness of breath was simply because

of the infection. However, After numerous blood cultures and a being seen by

an infectious disease doc, the infection in my blood is totally gone. I still

don't know what caused it. The doc said it was not from my port-a-cath, was

not from kidneys or urinary tract since all urine cultures were fine. He said

it was most likely from diverticulitis or possibly a flare of pancreatitis with

some vascular obstruction to my pancreas and that caused the infection to

spread to my blood. Anyway, the shortness of breath got so bad that my husband

tried to make me go to the E.R. Thursday night. His sis has congestive heart

failure and also was an RN (actually taught nursing for a few years). Hubby

had told her about the edema and shortness of breath and she had told him to

make me go to the ER if I had another bad episode of being short of breath.

Anyway, I wouldn't go to the ER on Thursday because Friday was Nikki's

graduation for her Master's degree and I was not about to miss that! The

shortness of breath is actually a lot better now - I think because the lasix

finally got a lot of the fluid off. I was hospitalized from last Saturday to

Tuesday and I gained 22 lbs in those 3 days. I lost 11 lbs in less than 24

hours. I am now up just 4 lbs from where I was last Saturday, so I've lost 18

lbs of fluid since Tuesday. It took from 80 to 160 mg of lasix a day to get

rid of the fluid. Yesterday I was able to cut the lasix down to 120 mg and

today back down to my normal dose of 80 mg.

I hope I don't ever have to deal with being so short of breath again. It was

miserable. I was so short of breath that even talking was difficult. Anyway,

if there are exercises I can do to help with the edema, I'd love to know about

it.

Thanks,

W