this morning and had his first echocardiogram since his initial diagnosis of congestive heart failure back in December 2018. I was surprised to hear his ejection fraction, or "ef" (which indicates your heart's ability to pump out blood), hasn't changed at ALL. A healthy heart will have an ef of 50-70%. Anything under 30% is considered "severely abnormal". Dad's ef was 20% in 2018 and is 20% now. He feels fine and can do pretty much whatever he wants to do (the idiot couldn't wait for the plow guy Tuesday morning and went out and shoveled our driveway), and his doctor was actually pretty satisfied. The average number of years a patient with CHF/poor ef lives after diagnosis is 3-5 years*; Dad only has days to be past that window. But I still find it weird that all the meds Dad is on, and all the care he takes--watching his diet, exercising 30 minutes twice a day--didn't improve his ef.
* - When Dad was in the hospital, one of his nurses was a former high school classmate of mine. We didn't speak to each other back then--we ran in very different social circles--but he was happy to talk to me about Dad's condition. He told me CHF is the #1 reason people get re-admitted to the hospital and it's people not taking care of themselves. So when I think about the 3-5 year life expectancy after diagnosis, I think it's probably mostly the folks who don't take care of themselves. Because there's also people who live for literal decades with CHF.
I'm still counting this as a win because Dad's heart hasn't worsened. If his ef had gone down, I'm pretty sure Dad would've been dwelling on it and telling me constantly how he doesn't have long to live :-(
