Tag: Old age

New Development #1

Posted on by armenhov

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.

Preface

Posted on by armenhov
Not to scare people away, but rather for the entertainment of those poor souls who stumble on this series of posts, I’m starting to document any age-related changes in my body and mind, while the latter is still capable of noticing those and putting them down on virtual “paper”. Unless I accidentally die too soon, I hope this may be an interesting account of all coming attractions of old age, illnesses and gradual deterioration of the body. Perhaps people may also witness more subtle deterioration of mind as may be evidenced by the changes of the quality of these posts, unnoticeable for the author. I called these series: “The story of how I age an die”, but, I suppose, the last post will have to be added by somebody else, lest the story remains unfinished.