Salt, Salt, and more Salt

Today was a busy day at our house! It started early for me at 8:40 (hey, that's really early for me these days!) with a conversation with our head pastor, Ron. We had a great conversation and he is getting me in touch with another church member who has had a successful ablation. Though I'm not too keen on that idea, at least he's been where I am and possibly has had similar experiences. Then came a conversation with Parkview's patient advocate, at my request, regarding my experience back in March. She was very nice and is on the case addressing my misdiagnosis and all the other mistakes that happened. I also spoke with the director at FW Cardiology about the same thing, and that went really well, too. Like I told both of them, the purpose of bringing up all that happened is not to rant and rave, but to make them aware of what happened so that it doesn't happen to anyone else.
After my busy start, I got ready and headed to see Dr. Devecchi, the cardiac electrophysiologist. He was very nice, knowledgeable and spent about 35-45 minutes with me. He is going to get my papers from Parkview and the Holter test results from Indy and look over them before my next appointment in two weeks. In the mean time, he switched my beta-blocker to one that will hopefully work better and not have so many side effects, like the memory, concentration and fatigue problems I've been experiencing. The other biggie is I need to add much more salt into my diet. Shocker! I never thought I'd hear a doctor say that! Basically, I am drinking plenty of water, yet am constantly thirsty and dehydrated because I don't have enough salt to hold that water in. That causes my blood pressure to go down, which my heart tries to compensate for, and my heart rate goes up even more. So now I am supposed to add salt to everything I eat and drink things like Gatorade, Propel, etc.
Dr. Devecchi and I also talked about the number of health issues I've had over the past four years, and there is a possibility that I may have a problem with my nervous system. We are not yet to the point where we are going to do any testing, but it is something we may address in the future.
Overall, I was very pleased with my visit with him, and feel like he knows what he is doing. He is also going to talk to some cardiac EP friends of his on the east coast and see if anyone is doing research for IST. He and I both agree that I am too young for an ablation/pacemaker, so I feel comfortable keeping him as a doctor.
The rest of the day was a blur of a fabulous lunch with my discpleship mentor, Judy, and taking Katie to the dr. for a 103 fever. Busy busy! Thank you for continuing to pray for our family. Scott's classes are pretty tough this semester and we have not yet heard back about long-term disability, so those are at the top of our prayer list right now.