Look time no see

Hey guys! Hope everyone is well! I'm here with my update on how I'm doing.

I'm happy to report that I'm doing pretty good over all. My heart is showing some improvement. I went to our local zoo and I climb a flight of stairs and I wasn't short of breath!! That was awesome! Just had my pacemaker checked and all was looking great there. It has never so far has never had to be used ( knock on wood).

I turned 33 and I don't care who knows it cuz I'm proud to say I am 33 and that I have out shined the doctor that said I would only be able to live on D 5 years. Well it been 16 years!! Anyway I had a awesome birthday my friend came in to visit and went to LA area. Getting to see Hollywood, learning the lovely LA freeways, getting to meet Okarol and Lori heartwel and finally Universal Studios. It was amazing to get to do that and learning how to travel on D and going to 2 different D centers and seeing how they did things. I learn some ideas I took back with me to my center! I have stared a support group at my center! I have had a hard time getting people to come to the meetings. It is a hit and miss. As you know I don't back down easily so I'm trying some different thing to get them interested. I know how much the support of this group has meant to me and when I met quite a few of you in Vegas over the last 2 years I was like a kid in a candy store to be around others that understood me. I want wanted to give that to the people at my center. So I'm not going to give up and I'm get it to take off! Well that's all the good news. Now for the bad news. In July I had a graft placed. Right after it was placed I started to have problems. They used the catheter allowing the graft to heal and my hand would go numb and have extreme pain. I would have to cut my time short cuz I couldn't handle it. So the decision was made to remove the catheter and see if the graft to work on it own. We tried for about 2 weeks and could not get the speed past 250 and also I could barely handle those needles this was with the numbing it. Finally I saw the doctor for a check up and he said the graft had to be removed asap! The skin around where they placed it had died and I was at risk of losing my hand! That's why it was hurting and was cold. My heart was not able to supple enough blood to support both. It was due to my heart being enlarge. So just about 2 months they removed the bottom part of the graft and I have been slowly removing all the dead skin and healing. But my thumb, pointer and middle fingers are still numb and will take 6 months to come back. I am back on the catheter and for now I'm staying with that. I'm too scared to try again in my leg and I just want to heal up. But I'm getting better and my hand is slowly coming back. It helps I'm right handed and it forces me not to baby it. This is just another challenge in my book.

Well I think you all are caught up now and know I'm hanging in there!!

Oh and also went to my 1st concert. My sister wouldn't be happyif I didn't tell you about this. One week ago I went to the wait for it...........One Dorection concert. My sis Jazzy bought the tickets and so I drove and we went together. It was experience. She had tickets all the way in the last row and when I tryied to walk up there it almost too much. So we to them and they gave us tickets about 50 feet from the stage. Woot kidney perks! I still had some steps to walk back up but I could handle that so much better. It was amazing to be in the middle of 60,000 girls scream and in love with those 5 boys! LOL

now I think I'm done.