Heart health led to food joy

Back in 2007, I had the biggest scare of my life when my heart started worrying me. I developed palpitations and couldn't breathe very well at all. I ended up in hospital put on heart controlling meds and needing to use my ventilator more in the day.

Extract;
...Then the palpitations got more frequent, not even the overnight use of my ventilator calmed me. In the mornings within minutes my hands would start pouring with sweat and I would sit in bed panting while my mother got me up...

Whilst in hospital I found out I weighed 6 stone 4 (88 pounds)! I had great difficulties eating. Thankfully I was given pureed food and this changed my diet to things I hadn't eaten in ages like vegetables and meat! We were all overjoyed by that. We were incredulous that I could eat again albeit mushed up.

Extract;
....I discovered some food I could eat on the second day I was admitted. I was discussing with a nurse about my eating difficulties and they suggested that I try the puree menu the hospital had. One funny memory I have was upon seeing a pureed corn beef hash. I enquired “this is a normal piece of meat, how am I supposed to eat it?” After my first mouthful I had realised how foolish I was as the meat thinned out and turned out to be liquidised......

It's amazing that so many bad moments in my life turned into Golden Opportunities. Thank God indeed!

Read more about these Golden Opportunities in my book DMD LIFE ART & ME, available in ebook and paperback versions here; http://duchennemen.net16.net/buymybook.html


Foreword

I’m Ian Griffiths from South Wales. This book is a story of my life so far up to the age of twenty five years. I live with and suffer from the ill effects of DMD which stands for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. It is a severe muscle wasting disease and a life limiting terminal illness. It won’t kill you in six months in the traditional sense of ‘terminal’, but it’s far crueller than that, it steals every muscle in your body first and then kills you, anywhere up to the age of thirty. There have been cases of men living past that into their forties and fifties but only with drastic interventions such as ventilators and tracheotomies, more on this can be found by reading on.
I hope to cover a few things in this book, from a history of my childhood years to a more detailed history from sixteen years onwards and finally onto my current problems and triumphs. At times things I write may make you smile or may make you pause and think about the seriousness of life with this devastating disease. I really hope there will be a cure but currently for us supposedly ‘older’ guys with DMD (over twenty one), there seems very little hope. If I don’t see a cure in my lifetime, I hope my campaigning helps in some way bring it about for future generations, so another child won’t have to see their body wither and die before their time.