skinny legs and a good heart

My apologies for the long silence. I've been unusually busy over the last two weeks, finishing an overdue chapter for a collection of essays on Christians and voting, preparing weekly lectures for my course at Claremont, and working on a revision of Fuller's online ethics course. Oh, yeah, and writing a dissertation, too.

The same stretch of time has also been pretty eventful on the health front, giving me a couple of pieces of good news to report related to the water retension problems I mentioned in my previous post. The more significant item, in the big picture, is that last week's electrocardiogram showed that the excess fluid had not caused damage to my heart.

More immediately pressing on my mind (and legs and chest), however, was the question of the retension itself. The day I went in for the test, my cardiologist changed my medications in an effort to bring my weight down. It backfired at first. By Friday, I'd gained five more pounds, making it difficult to breath and nearly impossible to bend my legs more than about 60 degrees. He made a further change, and advised that if there was still no turn around I would need to check into the hospital. The second change worked. I've rid myself of 13 pounds of water in the last five days. I still have a few pounds to go, but I can see my ankles, walk without gasping, and pull my feet up under my chair. Tomorrow I plan to ride my bike out to a lunch meeting. I feel fairly normal again.