<p>:D Hayden
Glad to hear from you mini, I had been wondering- but I wondered if you had washed away.
Sounds like you are getting good treatment- keep up the good work, you will be up to 3mph in no time!</p>
<p>mini, welcome back! CC is different without you no wonder so many people were asking what happened. I hope that the other posters still missing (and missed) will follow the trend, and well hear from them soon. </p>
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<p>my first thought was: OMG, I hope that the nurses did not start appearing less frequently to perform their duties. That was a risky fundraising strategy; luckily it literally paid off :)</p>
<p>Geez, mini! You practically gave ME a heart attack with your thread! Just catching up here and stumbled across this. Glad to hear you are doing well and on the mend. When do we hear a new chapter on the status of US healthcare again from up close and personal?? When I see it, I’ll KNOW you are on the mend for sure 
I know your sense of humor is intact-- can’t wait to hear more about the treatment you received.</p>
<p>Mini- I’m so glad you’re back! I have missed your posts. What an ordeal! you and Ellen have had quite a year - I hope 2008 is better to you.</p>
<p>I wish you well, Mini.</p>
<p>Whaaat?? How did I miss this thread and this news? mini - I am so sorry! From your other posts, I deduce you are feeling better and on the mend. But I am thinking of you and sending belated positivity your way.</p>
<p>(I think I now know why I missed the news…this is a thread with the word ‘exercise’ in the title and I was avoiding it like I am the bathroom scale. Didn’t even realize what had happened.)</p>
<p>Mini, I’d been missing your zingers and was wondering if you’d dropped off the radar screen. So glad to hear that you’re on the road to recovery!</p>
<p>So I had my first “cardiac rehab” today. Danced my way around the room to electrified Christmas Carols for about 10 minutes. Some of the other inmates, I mean patients, thought I was a little odd, but I explained that I could imagine the room and folks walking around the room as either a Turkish prison (a la Midnight Express) or a dance floor, and I chose the second as my delusion. Got on an exercise bike. There were folks with double, triple, quadraple, septuple bypasses, quintuple stents, pig hearts, Jarvics, and various other bionic life forms. The exercise physiologist was also a squash player. One-pound weights. </p>
<p>I expect I won’t be there often. Once I have the pattern, I can do this at my own gym. Didn’t play the violin last night, but expect to be back in the opera choir on Sunday for The Messiah, and then it’s on to some Puccini.</p>
<p>Getting up in the morning is still tough. The nurse’s interpretation is that my meds from the day before are wearing off, but that doesn’t really make any sense as I’m not on any blood pressure meds or beta blockers. Have collected more dimes! (maybe around $750 worth? Half a house!)</p>
<p>Getting ready to start financial aid forms for my younger one for next year. Between my wife and me, we’ll have a sob story that could make a stone bleed. (Hope we hit an artery! ;)</p>
<p>Thanks for all your good thoughts.</p>
<p>Thanks for the update mini.</p>
<p>Congrats on your fundraising success!</p>
<p>Continued good thoughts and hopes that your mornings get better.</p>
<p>Mini, I’m sure you’ve done this before, but could you please post a link for the house-building donations. I’d rather build a house in India this year.</p>
<p>Love your phrasing: Cardiac excercise equals dance floor;<br>
“Inmates… other Bionic Life Forms” LOL
Irreverent, wierd thought processes? Sure, whatever keeps your spirits up.<br>
Keep Up the Great Attitude!</p>
<p>"Mini, I’m sure you’ve done this before, but could you please post a link for the house-building donations. I’d rather build a house in India this year.</p>
<p>We don’t have the flyer up on the web yet, but here’s pics of what we are doing - 15,000 dimes makes a house.</p>
<p>[Photo</a> Album](<a href=“http://www.lafti.net/photo_album.html]Photo”>Photo Album)</p>
<p>If you send me your e-mail (<a href="mailto:shantinik@earthlink.net">shantinik@earthlink.net</a>), I’ll send back a flyer.</p>
<p>can now participate in my informal survey, anecdotal. </p>
<p>I’ve been on Tricor for many years and discovered a few years ago that there were severe side affects that my doc did not warn me about or know about. - Did you have leg, shoulder, knee, hip aches either in the muscles or joints? </p>
<p>Likewise for lisinopril, Was your dosage above 20mg? Did they start high then work down or low and work up to a higher dosage?</p>
<p>Fish oil, Your recommended dosage?</p>
<p>Of course if you were incapacitated, this survey would verify my hypothesis, that ignorance is the best verification of efficacy. </p>
<p>-stay off the nam.</p>
<p>take care, mini</p>
<p>Tricor worked for me -halved my triglycerides (which was the goal), kept general cholesterol under 200, and no side effects. However, now in a campaign against LDL (which isn’t terrible - 128), switched to Zocor (40mg) plus Zetia (we could have done it as one pill as Vytorin, but I object to branded drugs when there are suitable generics). Fish oil - currently, I have about 40 bottles of samples of Lovaza (Omacor), and will switch to fish oil with the same DHA/ECA content (so instead of 4 Lovaza’s, it will be six capsules from Costco or Trader Joe’s). Note: the Mayo Clinic has found that fish oil actually raises LDL 5-10%, but since it has been shown to reduce heart incidents (unlike the standard cholesterol lowering drugs), we’ve decided to combine the two regimens.</p>
<p>Totally off Lisinipril - began with low blood pressure - and it made it worse.</p>
<p>My doc claims that, with the statins, taking Co-Enzyme Q10 is critical, and there is some evidence to back her up - though no one really knows what the correct dose is.</p>
<p>45 minutes on the treadmill tonight at the grand speed of 2.4 mph. Monday, we step up the incline.</p>
<p>Tricor barely budge the trigyl. even on a low starch diet. Got severe muscle/joint pain that supposedly is “rare” according to the contradiction small print. Also probably damaged my liver and pancreas because now I am really sensitive to sugar and starches. Biggest thing that reduced the trigl level was to go starchless on the collars and meals. No nam, Chinese pastries, pasta, breads, yams, potatoes, corn, citrus, and my wife. </p>
<p>Niacin is gives me a real hot pepper flash that is barely bearable at the two pill level- I’m supposed to take 2-3 grams daily. </p>
<p>Fish oil, I am supposed to take up to 12 grams but can only manage 4 grams. I like Salmon parts but I have to think that this oil is from farmed fish, fed farmed shrimp loaded with fat soluble hormones and DDT.</p>
<p>Lisinopril tickles my throat at the 5 mg level.</p>
<p>I can’t have fish oil in the house because it makes the dog’s IBD act up (in ways that make me want to make sure she never has it again), so I switched to flax seed oil. Doesn’t have that fishy burp reaction either.</p>
<p>“Fish oil, I am supposed to take up to 12 grams but can only manage 4 grams. I like Salmon parts but I have to think that this oil is from farmed fish, fed farmed shrimp loaded with fat soluble hormones and DDT.”</p>
<p>The issue with fish oil isn’t the number of grams, but the amount of active ingredients (EPA/DHA) within those grams. The daily dose of Lovaza (Omacor) - the one for which there were FDA trials - is only four grams, but a higher concentration of the active ingredient. To help you out, each Lovaza capsule is 465 mg EPA, and 375 mg DHA. Multiply by four. Then you eat the number of capsules of off-the-shelf fish oil to match. (Comes to 6 grams of the Costco variety.) There is no evidence that a higher dose than that makes any difference.</p>
<p>All of the USP-tested brands have dealt with the DDT, etc. issue. </p>
<p>I had gone starchless too. Now I’m back on little amounts of it. Niacin is impossible for me.</p>
<p>Sometimes I too sneak in the carbos because of the low blood sugar. DW wants me be to be 100% sugar/starch free because of the diabetes II problem.</p>
<p>Mini! I was wondering where you had been. I missed this. Welcome back. Sorry to hear this, but glad you survived and are back to tell us about it. Sending best wishes for a complete recovery.</p>