Charlotte's Heart Transplant

Hello internet friends! I have received so much positive feedback about my blog and it really means the world! My aim is to have something out there for people that hear that they need a transplant and don't know what this means for their lives but also for families. I want to educate the general public and to show that normal looking people need this life saving operation, it's not just for people that look really ill and you shouldn't judge people looking at the outside of them! I want to spread the word about CRY and for young people to go and have their hearts checked, but also for these heart screenings to be more widely available, did you know that 80% of young people that die from sudden cardiac death don't have any symptoms before death! So recently, I've been a bit MIA while I've been writing one of my essays for uni and it's finally handed in now! So I've taken a couple of days off to do some things for myself and spend some time with Cia...

15/01/01 Just a little catch up as I never wrote a post when I was discharged! I was only in over night at Liverpool, my heart rate was stable and I felt much better by the morning so I was all good to go home. I had 80mg of Furesomide when I got to the ward on the Wednesday night and it was amazing. I felt like I had new lungs! Granted, I had to go to the toilet 7 times in an hour (which wasn't the easiest task considering I was on a drip!) but it was so good, I felt better really quickly. I was very excited to have a good sleep because the previous nights I'd not been able to breath at home so I was shattered. But being in a hospital is grim, I feel like once you've been in for one night it's much better as you're settled and you've worked out the temperature etc. but the first night is always awful. Because I was on a ward with the older ladies, the lights were off at 9:30 (it was much more relaxed on the transplant ward) and I'd only just eaten di...

10/01/18 Hello all! Fancied a little trip to see my friends at Liverpool Heart and Chest today. Three weeks ago I had a cold and my chest was much worse and I was struggling to breath but I just thought it was because I'd been ill so I left it for a while. But it still hasn't cleared and this week I've been really struggling to breath at night, I've had to sit up in bed to sleep because I can't breath. The best way I can explain it is that it feels as if someone is lay on top of me and sometimes I wake up in the night because I feel like I'm being suffocated. I've also had a crackly chest which I've not really had since I started taking my water tablet, although I sometimes get it if I eat too much salt. So I sent an email yesterday and Dr Todd said he wanted me to come in to the day ward. I arrived about 1pm and sat around until 3 (I had a nap obviously) and then I got my mum to ask what was going on because no one had spoken to me in that tim...

Friday 5th Jan 2017 I spoke to Ruth on the phone this afternoon to find out if I'm being listed and I have to wait until I've switched to Warfarin! So currently I take Apixaban (anticoagulant) because I had a blood clot in my heart, and I still take it to prevent getting another one and possibly having a stroke. Apixiban is a newer version of anticoagulant so it's a fixed dose whereas Warfarin you have to have the INR in your blood monitored and they adjust your dose and it can also be affected by certain foods. Warfarin works by blocking Vitamin K which is what clots your blood, so if you ever had an emergency operation they would give you Vitamin K to reverse the effect of Warfarin. However, there is no reversing agent for Apixaban so because I know I'll be having an operation at some point they will put be on Warfarin to ensure there's a reverse agent. This is annoying because I already knew I needed to switch to Warfarin and I could have done it weeks ago h...