070 The Importance of Potassium

Hey, everyone! It's so nice to feel like I am finally rested after spending two night sleeping on the couch in Jimmy's hospital room last week. Now that I have recouped I want to write about what I learned while Jimmy was in the hospital.

Potassium is important!

You look at that "K" on the periodic table and you eat a banana but do you really realize just how important Potassium is in your diet? I know that I didn't until Jimmy didn't have enough of it.

Last time Jimmy got dehydrated and his potassium dropped so did his blood pressure. Once they straightened things out with his hydration I didn't think much of it because they took him off his blood pressure meds so I thought they were the main culprits causing the drops in blood pressue. It seems that potassium had more to do with it than I thought.

Evidentally, you have ALL KINDS of problems when your potassium levels drop. Some of these are cramps, decreased muscle activity, decreased function in your GI tract, blood pressure drop, and potential heart damage. YIKES! To say I underestimated the importance of potassium doesn't even come close to the mark. Read more about what Potassium does in your body.

So make sure that you are drinking lots of fluids and taking your vitamins so that you reduce your chances of experiencing low potassium levels. Read here to discover common causes of low potassium levels.

035 Jimmy's Surgery Day

Jimmy right after he checked into the hospital
for his surgery. 44 lbs lost on the pre-op diet!

If you didn't know, Friday was the day! Jimmy and I went to Heartland bright and early for his gastric sleeve WLS. Everything went amazing and they were even able to take Jimmy back for surgery about an hour early. I have a clip for you today and we recorded around 12 hours post-op. I did the narrating for this clip because Jimmy's throat was dry and a little sore from surgery. I hope you enjoy it anyway :)

Also, today's picture was taken directly after Jimmy checked in for his WLS. We also found out that Jimmy has lost 7 more pounds on the pre-op liquid diet between when he weighed on Wednesday and when they were prepping him for surgery on Friday. So that was really exciting news and a great way to start the day!

030 Matters of the Heart

Alright, last time I told you about going to the hospital for Jimmy's big testing day, and I told you that the nurse practitioner was sending Jimmy to see a cardiologist.

Today, I am going to tell you about the cardiologist.

Jimmy's cardiologist appointment was with Dr. McGraw (unfortunately not Tim). Dr. McGraw was very nice and thorough. Through screening Jimmy and asking him a series of diagnostic questions he determined that Jimmy was low risk for the surgery (great news!). However, he still wanted him to have an echocardiography (sonogram of the heart) done to measure the size of the heart and the thickness of the heart walls.

That meant lots of waiting for us because they won't do the test without insurance pre-approval. Thankfully this pre-approval was just a matter of 45 minutes to an hour of waiting in the waiting room of Dr. McGraw's office. During this time I talked Jimmy into filming a vlog (which you have already seen) and I got a chance to read some more Mark of Athena. So pretty good trade off.

When they did call us in for the test, Jimmy started making lots of jokes about whether or not they were going to find out this heart was pregnant. :) What can I say? I knew what I was getting into when I married him. Anyway the nurse thought it was pretty funny so I wasn't too embarrassed.

After several pics from several angles the nurse called Dr. McGraw in so that he could look everything over. He tweaked some of the settings, took a couple more pics, and declared Jimmy ready okay for surgery.

It was a real relief to know that everything is ok and that we will be able to proceed with the surgery as scheduled.

In less than a week Jimmy will be having his WLS and nothing will ever be the same again! It's both exciting and scary. Thank you all for all of your prayers, encouragements, and thoughts!

Grace and Peace,