Health Update

I've had a lot of phone calls, text messages, Facebook messages and emails, all asking how I am doing physically. I started trying to answer them all, but it is going to take forever, so I decided I'd write one blog on this and hopefully everyone will see it and it will answer most, if not all of the questions. If not, if you'll message me, I'll try to get back to you.

I did have my scopes done on Thursday, and they found nothing. No bleeding, no sign of where I have been bleeding. Nothing.  It was explained that when they do the scopes, they do not go into the small intestine, so it is very possible the bleeding was occurring there. The good news is, it appears that the bleeding finally stopped earlier this week. We are just hoping it does not start up again. The bad news is, my hemoglobin is still pretty low, meaning my red blood cell count is low, which makes me low on oxygen. This leaves me very tired with little energy. It seems I have about 4 or 5 good hours in me per day right now, then I need a nap. I'm on medication to help make sure I don't start bleeding again, along with iron pills to try to boost my blood. A negative here is that I absolutely had to get back on my heart medication, which thins my blood and makes me much more prone to bleed easy. Kind of a catch 22. I'm just going to have to monitor it and if I show signs of bleeding again, get to the doctor.

As I said, my hemoglobin is low. For a man of my size, anything under 13 on the hemoglobin count is considered low. I was at 10.6 Thursday. My doctor says it will take 6-9 weeks to build my blood up again. I'm going to try to boost that quicker by making sure I eat the right foods, but I can only do so much and the rest is up to my body to respond. As long as I do respond and rebuild the red cell count, I should be just fine. If I do not start responding, then there is obviously something else going on in my body that destroys the red blood cells and we will have to run more tests. I'm just believing that we are not going to reach that place.

Thank you everyone for your love and concern. I will try to keep you posted.