A Change of Lifestyle - Epilogue

 

On Tuesday the 5th of October I smoked my final cigarette at 11 pm. More on how that is working out in a bit. On Thursday the 7th of October I had my follow-up appointment with my heart doctor. I had blood work done the morning before and would get the results of how my change of lifestyle was working out.

I checked in at the doctors office and they escorted me to the examine room, stopping off at the scale to get my weight. The nurse recorded 184 lbs.  That was a loss of 20+ lbs in 2 months time. I went in the examine room and then went through the usual routine of the nurse asking me about my health, meds I was taking and had a noticed any changes in my overall health. Then she gave me the lab results on the blood I had deposited the day before at the lab.

First off just about everything had dropped. My glucose level was down 6 points from the previous review two months before. More importantly I had dropped my cholesterol 24 points, from 204 to 180. So how could I have had a TIA just a week before. Was it because of the life style change I was making? The ER doc said possibly. The cardiologist said he doubted it. So why? If I had only made the changes a year earlier? If I had heeded the warnings, like the dizziness or the double vision I had experienced a year before? If I had only quit smoking before now?

As I write this it has been 11 days since my last cigarette. I think I am finally adjusting. I quit cold turkey. Laid them down at 11 pm one night and didn’t pick them up again. Days 3, 4, 5, 6 were some of the worse. On those nights I could not sleep. On 3, 4 and 6 I actually only slept 4 hours each night. On day 5 I didn’t sleep at all. If I had it all to do again I think I would have cut back slowly and used one of the stop smoking aids. On days 8 and 9 I wanted to smoke really bad. I got through those couple of days and am doing fine now. Those two days were some very stressful days. I will write about them in a day or two.

I have two more tests coming up. A MRI this upcoming week and a brain scan the following week. I expect them to be normal also.

So, what have I learned from all this? I will take up that issue in the next series of blog posts. Let’s just say for now that it was not due to anything I could have changed. In the next series I will get into the spiritual aspects of what happened. I will touch on why bad things happen to good people.

I want to take just  a moment to thank everyone who has kept me in their thoughts and prayers. I want to thank everyone for their concerns. Everyone from my church, my work, my Facebook friends, and of course my family and close friends. You have all been a great encouragement for me. I also want to thank God for His blessing we with great friends and for His help in getting me through the last couple of weeks.