Donald Gazzaniga Married 42 years Loomis, California age 69 5 children & 10 grandchildren

My CHF

I had just turned 63 when on January 17, 1997, I collapsed while rowing. I was preparing for a regatta (senior or master's class) when everything stopped. It was not a heart attack but a sudden loss of all power. I learned later that I had reached the end of the road because of CHF. I went through a diagnosis I never dreamed possible. I was told my life expectancy was about 6 to10 months. Transplant had not been mentioned at that time. I visited 4 different cardiologists during this period.
     According to all doctors involved, after reading my initial angiogram, my blood vessels were "slicker'n a whistle" which meant clean. It was my heart. I was otherwise in excellent condition. I was referred to Dr. Michael Fowler at Stanford University Heart Transplant Clinic. After our first visit together, I went through a heart transplant work up. While doing that, Dr. Fowler, who was one of the doctors involved in a Coreg trial, volunteered me for the trial's later stages. My Vo2max was at 12.5% and my EF at 24%. I was at the edge and the numbers had dropped from a few points above that in just 3 months time. During all of this, I did what most of us with CHF do. I studied the available material and learned little more than what Dr. Fowler had explained so well to me, but I came up with a few lifestyle changes that would help. Four steps would have to be adopted and followed::

1. The medication routine would have to be adjusted until it proved not harmful, but helpful instead
2. I must reduce sodium intake to below 500mg a day.
3. I must get both rest and exercise, but not the kind of exercise a physical therapist might kill me with
4. I was going to have to create low sodium recipes. Nobody had really done that for people who were ill. All I was able to find were "low sodium" books for healthy people

Although there were some web sites that boasted low salt or low sodium, research proved they weren't low enough for me and some of them didn't "cook" well. The American Heart Association's low-salt recipes were a bit too weird for me and many were too high in sodium so I developed my own recipes. It took a great deal of time, especially with bread, which is generally very high in sodium. After 2 years, I had put together a great many tasty, easy to prepare and very low sodium recipes that also fit into the ADA (American Dietetic Association), recommendations for nutrients and fats. I was also getting "better." These recipes will appear in a new book from St. Martin's Press, due out in January, 2001. You can find information about it at www.megaheart.com/.
     During all that time, I pushed myself to exercise. It wasn't easy. The first year of CHF, I could barely walk from my car to the doctor's office without making a lot stops and gasping for air. In order for Coreg to become part of my regimen, I had to have a pacemaker installed. The pacemaker helped regulate my heart which had also shown some radical PVCs, in dangerous numbers. Then I fell into a-fib and had to go on amiodarone for a year. Coumadin became a daily drug with weekly blood testing because we couldn't get my INR to stabilize. I have been taking Coumadin ever since. Exercising proved to be difficult because of the A-fib and the pacemaker settings, but we finally got all that together and I now walk 5 to 7 miles a day up and down some steep slopes. I work out on an excercycle and a Concept 2 rowing machine.
     After 3 years of never consuming more than 500mg of sodium a day, sticking to my medications in a tight routine and exercising, my EF has jumped up to a steady 38% and my Vo2max test on September 8, 1999, was 18.5%. As of April 3, 2000, my heart has "shrunk" from its first diagnosis of 7.46cm to 6.45cm. That's an amazing amount of shrinkage, and we did it without Batista! I'm now off the transplant list. Other heart-positive news from my last echo was that my right heart is now "normal" and the left heart outer wall seems to have returned to a normal thickness. All 4 steps I took worked because of the final step:
     Keep a great, upbeat, positive attitude! Don't quit on yourself. You and only you, can make it happen. Do it through action, through prayer, through helping others and you'll beat this thing. I read the following just this morning and I believe it's got a lot for us in it:

Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why it's called the present! Live and savor every moment. This is not a dress rehearsal!

My Interests

My rest time became devoted to a new endeavor my 4 daughters thought possible: painting. I have since painted more than 110 canvases and now work with a professional artist who has certainly done me a world of good with both my art and my health. I recommend this form of relaxation to anyone who has even a slight inclination for it.

My Family

My wife and I have 5 children and 10 grandchildren. The children; well, they used to be kids, are overeducated and thusly smarter than we are. Our oldest is a Ph.D. doctor of nutritional sciences and a registered dietitian. Our youngest is a high school teacher teaching Spanish. In between, we have an engineer, a lawyer and a biologist.

My Meds

  Don Gazzaniga -- March 17, 2003

All information on this site is opinion only. All concepts, explanations, trials, and studies have been re-written in plain English and may contain errors. No one here is a doctor. No information on this page should be used by any person to affect their medical, legal, educational, social, or psychological treatment in any way. This web site and all its pages copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 Jon C.