Hello Everyone – From Ed

I’m feeling much better today and this picture proves it. Coffee…. coffee…… coffee. I finally felt like drinking some this morning. Thanks for the prayers, comments in the journal and the phone calls.

And… thanks to Andrew for stopping by this morning – it was good to see you buddy!

Linda will tell you what the doctor said.

The x-ray was clear, so there is no pneumonia but what he did say was the pressure in his lungs is very high, he called it PAH – pulmonary arterial hypertension.

Of course I had to Google it and found the following:

Pulmonary hypertension is abnormally high blood pressure in the arteries of the lungs. It makes the right side of the heart need to work harder than normal. The right side of the heart pumps blood through the lungs, where it picks up oxygen. Then, the blood returns to the left side of the heart, where it is pumped to the whole body.

This is the reason for his fatigue, weakness and shortness of breath and there are many causes, but having the artificial valve is one of them.  They will still do the scope down his throat tomorrow since the cultures remain negative.  He did not have a fever over the last 24 hours – great!

He looks even better than yesterday and is feeling good.  The next step is to treat the PAH and that will be with his cardiologist.