If you’re not getting older, you’re dead.

Tom Petty

Here it comes: a welcome interruption in the boring baseline description of my health condition: a new development: shortness of breath. (Is it allowed to have three colons in one sentence?) At least it feels like shortness of breath, but after 3-4 weeks of watching and analyzing it, I’m inclined to think it might be a symptom of a stomach problem. However, it is here, it lasted for more than 3 weeks, it doesn’t go away and I have never had it before. New, exciting development in this story bringing me one step closer to the finish line: woo-hoo!

It dose get worse after I eat, especially if I eat after 8 pm, and then I have hard time sleeping/breathing, especially when I lay on my right side. This often is accompanied with the heartburn. It’s still possible that the problem is of a cardiovascular nature, but I would think my blood pressure would be going up in this case. I’m, of course, using my primitive, layman logic here, it goes like this: my original hypertension is mitigated by vessel dilators, thus, the brain gets enough oxygen and doesn’t send distress signals to the heart to pump harder. If my current shortness of breath, were due to heart problem, causing insufficient oxygen going to the brain, that should have caused a similar distress signal which caused my original hypertension. However, while feeling this discomfort, my blood pressure was pretty low. I even tried to reduce my blood pressure medicine dosage to see if that makes a difference. My blood pressure went up, but no effect on the breathing problem. At the same time not eating anything for some time, especially not consuming stomach irritating things like coffee, makes all the difference and I can breath normally again.

So, the plan is to take it easier on food and hope this is a temporary stomach irritation that will go away. Or I’ll go away. Anyway, we’ll watch it and see what happens.

OK, I’ll try to finish the baseline in the next post. I know it’s taking too long: my first post was back in November 2023, so it’s no longer an up-to-date baseline anymore, but I hate leaving it unfinished.