At the heart of the matter

I have written a lot of happy happy posts of late, it is less dramatic than the trials of hospitals but the fact is life in every form has its ups and downs whoever you are and I am simply embracing my current up phase. However I would be lying to you if I said that all was simple, I still have my medications to keep the tumours' activity to a minimum and I still have to regularly monitored by the doctors... Well we wouldn't want things to be entirely normal would we? Amongst all of this there is one tiny concern that is ongoing... Well it is not exactly tiny... It is my heart. For months now my blood pressure has been creeping higher and as I sit here now my heart is probably working twice as hard as it should be. My diastolic pressure is somewhere around the one hundred and twenty mark when it should sit about eighty or ninety, this really does freak out the technicians who take it.

So what is causing this? Blood tests aren't really giving any answers so could it be that it is a side effect of one of my medications? If so which one? It is all a bit trial and error and a complete pain in the ass. My question is though how is this going to effect my day to day living. I like to think I am a naturally active person, I enjoy exercise and I want to improve my fitness and if possible shift some steroid induced weight but if I go about this as a healthy person would am I going to cause my heart a problem? If for example I start running am I going to put unnecessary strain on a heart that is already working too hard? My doctors are working on it but labs are notoriously slow and impersonal so it is unlikely that I will get any answers in the next week. However a week is a long time for someone with a month until her next scan, twenty five percent of a predictable life period is to be wasted on waiting around? I think not!

So my plan is to listen to my body but go ahead with what I want to do regardless and what I want to do is move! My heart with just have to be as strong as it needs to be!