So, about ten months ago, I wrote this:

As the story I mentioned earlier this weeks says, the original echocardiogram locally on 2006.09.13 measured my ejection fraction at 23%, less than half of the normal value of 50% to 65%. An angiogram on 2006.10.04 confirmed that figure, or at least the range of 20-25%. And, as noted, there's very little chance that it would improve—the story of treatment is to prevent it from getting worse. So yesterday's procedure held the prospect for very bad news, with the best I could reasonably hope for being "it hasn't gotten any worse."

And yet the cardiologist confirmed: my EF is now 30-35%.

Yes, I do feel like I won the PowerBall.

I'll start exercising again in a week or two to help build some strength, but one of the drugs that sometimes helps restore blood-pumping capability is doing exactly that for me. My weight continues to fall apace, my blood pressure is as low as it ought to be on these drugs but not quite too low (though I have to remember to wait a few seconds after standing before moving to avoid getting dizzy, at least when seated in a normal chair and not on the floor or reclining), and I'm learning how to eat less sodium without feeling either deprived, exhausted from cooking, or starving.

My EF is probably never going to return to 50-65% range, but it could get up into the 40s, and that's an extremely manageable place to live for several decades.

It was time this week for a follow-up echocardiogram, and I was really hoping to at least stay in that 30% to 35% range. My weight has fallen more—I've now lost 25% of the weight I was carrying at the time of diagnoses in September 2006. (For those of you who weigh 200 pounds, that's the equivalent of losing 50 pounds. I weighed more than 200 pounds.) Nonetheless, weight loss is leveling off some, I'm a bit thirstier this past week than I have been (maybe because I'm so dry from excising liquids now and the humidity has gone down), and I'm still fatigued a lot of the time. I was at least hoping to keep everything the same.

My new ejection fraction is 55%.

Yes, that's right in the middle of the "normal" range. Last year, my heart became enlarged as it worked way too hard to deal with the congestive failure. Today, the ultrasound showed it back to just 1mm above the "normal" range, or at 102% of normal size (instead of 133% of normal size). My pulse is regular, and my blood pressure is just a little too low.

So why am I tired all the time? Apparently it's from the large doses of the medicine, which have helped my heart actually recover to pre-failure capacity. The cardiologist cut the dosage of three of my four prescriptions in half, effective immediately, which should raise my BP a little bit and give me more energy.

After a full year of adapting to the idea that the heart just doesn't recover from this kind of failure, the current indication is that mine did. I'm going back for another ECG in four months (rather than six) to track how well I do on the lower doses of heart medicines, but if you didn't know any better, today's results would tell you I'm actually healthy.

This just isn't supposed to happen.

Not that I'm arguing. Just…puzzled. (No dietary changes for now; we're not going to mess with what is obviously working. We'll see shortly how much more energy I get from lower doses of the heart medicine.)

Update: I knew there was another shoe to drop. My creatinine levels are too high in my blood stream, a sign of depressed kidney function. My cardiologist told me to discontinue three of the four prescriptions altogether and get my blood retested next week.