It’s A Small World Afterall

My heart got really sick in 2007. February to be exact. Valentine’s Day to be even more exact (how ironic). In those dark mid-winter days, I began experiencing fierce episodes of fatigue, shortness of breath and pulmonary edema that landed me in the local hospital on several occasions and had my cardiologists at the Toronto General Hospital scratching their heads. Then the waves of ventricular tachycardia hit. And those bought me a one way trip to the ICU that would eventually last nine weeks in total and have me toting home two stents, an ICD, an enrollment on the heart transplant list and some cardiac scorch marks courtesy of a much needed ablation. Needless to say, 2007 was not a vintage year.

The fallout from all of that became a nearly six-month recovery period. Bedridden for most of that, I really didn’t start to feel good again until the following spring. And when that happened, boy did I take advantage of it. Because I had a feeling it wouldn’t last.

Life was pretty good. While I couldn’t drive or venture out on my own anymore, I did get to do some of the things I used to. Being a movie buff, it was amazing to be able to get out to see movies again. Nothing beats sitting in an actual theatre with fellow fans of a film, whooping and hollering at the premiere of a blockbuster. I was able to go shopping a little bit, walking around stores at my own pace. We would take days out in the van, going for picnics or barbeques when the weather was nice. And occasionally, when my heart was really behaving itself, I would get to go for visits to see aunts and cousins, or attend special events.

That was 2008. Two years on, and I’m pretty much bedridden again. All in all, I’d estimate I spend anywhere from sixty to eighty percent of my time in my bed now. In a small bedroom with a TV, a window and three fish.

But that’s what happens with heart failure. Every now and again, your life shrinks a little. Sometimes it’s almost imperceptible. And other times it’s in leaps and bounds. First it dines on your independence. Then it gobbles up geography. It swallows up friendships. And drinks away your good times. It devours your ability to work. Then finishes off your your dignity. Just when you think your bubble couldn’t shrink anymore it does. And does again. And again. And again. Until you wake up one morning and your bathroom that’s ten feet away is suddenly too far to get to without some help. A small world indeed.

There’s a scene in the 1996 movie Star Trek: First Contact that, for me, encapsulates the the feelings of a person being forced to give up too much. It happens about two thirds of the way through the movie. The Borg have infested the Enterprise, and Picard refuses to give the order to self-destruct the ship. Confused, Lilly, a surviving earth colonist rescued by Picard (played by Alfre Woodard) persues him into his ready room and confonts him on this seemingly spineless decision. When pushed, Picard’s resentment boils over:

“I will not sacrifice the Enterprise. We’ve made too many compromises already. Too many retreats. They invade our space and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds and we fall back. Not again. This time the line must be drawn here. This far and no further!”

It’s a wonderful moment that resonates true for many people fed up losing ground again and again to a relentless disease. He might just as well have been talking about Diabetes or Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Cancer, or Heart Failure. They all take and never give back. At first you don’t mind much, but by the end it’s a pretty shitty deal.

But unlike Picard and his crew that chose to fight back the Borg plague and eventually reclaim what was lost, us heart failure patients cannot. Instead, we can merely postpone the inevitable, and watch while our existances shrink smaller and smaller.

“You are a dying star. A white dwarf headed for a black hole. That’s physics. It’s inevitable”. Another line from a favourite movie of mine. (I’ll let you guess the title). But one that rings true for me just as much. My advice is simple: accept that your world will get a little smaller every day. Do what you can to slow the process but don’t fight against it. You’ll paradoxically only accelerate the process. And when you get to the stage where there’s nothing left to give, be content just to be alive. Because believe it or not, even that will eventually be up for grabs.

But I’m gonna fight like hell for that one. That’s my line Picard. That’s my line in the sand.

PS – 1:29am. I just got the call. Wish me luck. I hope this is the one. Stay tuned.

My IV’s Back And There’s Gonna Be Trouble

Back in November, the decision was made to discontinue my IV Lasix therapy. After enduring it all summer, my poor veins had finally given up the fight. They were collapsing faster than fanatical teenage girls at a Justin Beiber concert. That, in combination with the fact that my heart was actually coping quite well on the oral diuretics made it an easy call.

At the time it felt so good not to have to get poked and prodded two, or sometimes even three times every IV start. It was like taking a vacation from pain. You can imagine how refreshing and liberating that feels.

Pretty soon I began to forget all about the dreaded nurses visits, and it became almost like I’d never even had them at all. In fact, the only thing that reminded me I’d had them at all was the pharmacy calling around mid-December, asking for their IV pole back. I had not a moment’s hesitation handing it over.

After Christmas, I began to feel run down. Very fatigued and lacking in energy. At first I put it down to the usual post-holiday blahs, more mental than physical. But as the days dragged on I sensed that there was more to it than met the eye. And a good rule of thumb for CHF patients is: if you feel that way about it, there probably is.

Sure enough, by the beginning of February, my weight began to rise and my incidents of arrhythmias began to increase. So much so that by the end of the month, I was back in the hospital, tracing the occasional incidence of ventricular tachycardia across the monitor screen. Not a comforting sight.

After some tweaking of my medications, some gentle diuresing and a bit of observation, they let me go. I tried to continue to manage myself from home, but when the symptoms persisted and my bloodwork returned showing the new oral meds regimen had skyrocketed my Creatinine levels to over 180, it was time: bring back the IV.

Shit. Excuse my language, but the prospect of becoming a human pin cushion again was not something I relished. When the call was made my heart sank. I was on the phone with my heart transplant nurse practitioner, and to be quite honest I felt like crying. But as a patient, you often have to do things you know deep down inside are right and beneficial for you, yet you know are going to make you feel terrible. This was one of those times.

But there’s a new twist on the matter this time around. After administering only one dose today, my home care nurse declared that my veins are still in rough shape. So much so that she’s going to write a report to the doctors telling them that my ability to continue to get constant IV Lasix therapy will probably be limited to a few weeks at most before we run into the same collapsing phenomenon we hit before. If that’s the case then we have truly come to a crossroads. Because the transplant team refuses to allow PIC lines to be administered at home for fear of their candidates catching an infection. And if I need the IV Lasix to remain stable, can no longer get it at home because of my bad veins, yet will only be allowed to have a PIC line in the hospital, then it looks like I’ve reached the end of my time waiting at home. I’m hospital bound.

I told you there was gonna be trouble. Hey now, hey now, my IV’s back!

A Few More Misadventures

Well as some of you may or may not know, I spent a good portion of last week in the hospital. That’s right, I was in there giving the doctors and nurses one helluva time. (Actually, the opposite is true. They love me in there and call me the “perfect patient”. lol)

I arrived at the emergency room on the previous Friday because I’d begun to feel extremely fatigued, especially climbing the stairs. And this was more than the usual “stop half-way up to catch your breath” fatigue. This was more of the “I can barely even crawl up the stairs on my hands and knees” fatigue. To boot, I had begun having way more arrhythmias than usual. And strange ones. Ones that felt as though my heart wad doing backflips and summersaults around my chest.

Instead of waiting it out to see what would happen, I followed my gut and headed straight to the hospital to check into the emergency. At least there I’d be on a constant heart monitor and we’d be able to see what might be going on.

It didn’t take long to figure it out. My ECG tracings showed that I was experiencing something called VT, or Ventricular Tachycardia. Ventricular tachycardia is a tachycardia, or fast heart rhythm, that originates in one of the ventricles of the heart. It’s a potentially life-threatening arrhythmia because it may lead to ventricular fibrillation, asystole, and sudden cardiac death.

The thing is, the runs of VT I was having weren’t sustained runs. Four, maybe five beats at a time, then gone. And unless they’re sustained, the doctors prefer just to leave them alone and observe. So that’s exactly what they did over the next five days.

Since then, I’ve gradually started to feel better. More like myself. I feel the energy slowly starting to return. I feel like I might be able to get back most of what I lost. And that’s good because the nice weather is beginning to come back. I’d love to be able to take advantage of it by going on drives or for a picnic, or a much needed visit to a patio for drinks.

So why did it happen? Well I personally think I had a flu or small infection of some kind. See, my heart is so sensitive now, even to the smallest of upsets in my system. If I overdo it one day, my heart grumbles. If I eat too big a meal, my heart complains (because it’s a lot of work to break down a lavish dinner). So even a small bug would be able to cause a big upheval and put my weakened heart under a lot of strain. That’s why I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if it was a mild flu. My heart’s definitely been letting me know.

Well all’s well that ends well anyway. The hospital was great, the nurses took good care of me, the doctors made some necessary (and likely overdue) changes in my meds doses, and I’m beginning to feel somewhat better.

Now my plan is to sneak outside for a couple hours this weekend and bask in that glorious sunshine. Gotta get those Vitamin D levels up.

This is a classic photo. I show up in the emergency room and am on a heart monitor for VT, and what does my family do? They have a big picnic lunch right in front of me, knowing damned well I can’t have any fluids or solids. The Sharp family. What troopers! haha

Facebook Twitter Sweet

One of the things I’m so thankful for is the emergence of social networking. If you’re not familiar with the term, it’s those websites that allow people to post their thoughts and statuses to web pages for the rest of their circle of friends (and sometimes the world!) to see.

For a guy who’s increasingly housebound and, on some really bad days, bedridden, Facebook and Twitter are a downright Godsend. From my laptop or my iPhone I can connect with all my family and good friends to let them know how I’m fairing. Has it been a good day or a bad day? Do I feel triumphant or defeated? Or maybe it’s not even anything as significant as that. Maybe I just want to share a passing thought or a humerous anecdote. Whatever the case, the point is that I CAN.

Yet only a few short years ago, that freedom did not exist. Sure I could’ve fired up the old email program and banged out a couple quick messages to some peeps, but what makes these advancements so great is that instead of narrowcasting to only a few people in my circle, now I can reach them all at the same time. And they can all reach out to me simultaneously if they want to as well. It helps me feel linked in. It helps me to feel connected. And it helps me feel relevant.

That’s the injury of undergoing a long, slow and steady decline in your health. Besides the obvious losses, like stamina and strength, there are the invisible ones. The wounds to your social life. The loss of contacts. The falling by the wayside that inevitably occurs when you can no longer attend get togethers and have to opt out of most social engagements. Gradually you’re overtaken by a creeping irrelevance, until the point that you actually begin to feel like someone’s distant memory.

At least Facebook and Twitter are able to keep you in the ongoing conversation. Probably more important than actually ‘being there’ is being thought of, being considered. And that’s where social networking has saved the day for us chronic “sickos”.

But Facebook, especially, is a bit of a double edged sword. While it’s an amazing way to still be heard despite your physical absence, you also get a front row seat to what you’re missing out on. So-and-so has a birthday coming up? Too bad, you won’t be going to that. What’s-his-name got drunk and fell down the stairs at last weekend’s shindig? That must’ve been hilarious! Sucks that you missed that one. While Facebook can certainly keep you in the loop, you’ll still miss out on the fun.

The biggest bag over the head and kick to the gut, however, is the phenomenon of watching other people enjoying their milestones while you sit waiting quietly, patiently on the sidelines. I’ve read them all: A new baby is born. A new house is bought. A new job is landed. With each announcement I hear, I can’t help but feel my life, my life force, that which drives me upward, is stagnating and deminishing. Like a rocket launched from a pad that’s run out of fuel mid-flight. Have I reached my apex? Is this all there is for me now? My peers are slowly pulling away from me. Leaving me behind, step by step, accomplishment by accomplishment. Won’t anyone wait for me?

One day my hope is that I’ll get to rejoin them in life’s ascent. I’ll rejoin them in their celebrations and births and vacations and get togethers and whatever else they’re planning and I’m hoping they’ll invite me to. Maybe I’ll even have a few of my own to tell them about!

In the mean time, I’ll use my laptop and iPhone to stay breathlessly plugged in to the zeitgeist. And the conversations and statuses of friends and relatives that Twitter and Facebook diligently deliver will go on tasting bitter. And sweet.

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

William Shakespeare

Digital Fishies

Meet Sunny. He’s the Parrot Cichlid that swims around inside the digital fish tank in my iPhone. I know that sounds a little strange, but it’s true. A while back I got the idea that it might be nice to keep some fish because fish tanks are very relaxing to watch. The sounds of the bubbles, the plants swaying too and fro and the meanering fish are an oddly hypnotic combination. And if there’s anything that I need right now, it’s definitely something oddly hypnotic.

Which brings me to Sunny. I once considered getting a real fish tank but there were a couple of obstacles. First, the start-up costs of even a modest fish tank are quite high. Ironically, the fish (provided you don’t go too exotic) are often the least expensive things in the whole exercise. You’ve gotta get the tank, the filter, backdrop, gravel, plants, rocks, fixtures, food, water treatment solution… Whew! The list is long and pricey. All in, you’re looking at a couple of hundred bucks just to get a few wee fishies swimming around in their new home. The other downside is the mess. Us folks undergoing transplants shouldn’t be cleaning up after pets too much for fear of contracting germs or diseases, both before and after the operation.

Sunny is part of a new revolutionary application for the iPhone called “iQuarium”. For a few dollars you get everything you need and more to enjoy all the benefits a fish tank will bring, without emptying your wallet, and without all the fuss of feeding and cleaning and worrying about the temperature and oxygen levels of the water.

The program is incredibly lifelike. So much so that it’s often easy to forget you’re not looking at a real fish. And like a living fish, Sunny is dependant on me. I must feed him or he’ll get sick and die. I must play with him by tapping or tracking my finger on the glass or he’ll get lonely and depressed. And I must rearrange the tank every once in a while otherwise he’ll get bored. (How demanding can an e-fish get!? lol)

But no matter how silly it seems, it does provide me with little pockets of distraction and, more importantly, relaxation. If I feel stressed, I pull out my iPhone and have a look at what Sunny’s doing, and all my troubles just float away. Actually, this just might be a bona fide way patients in hospital can de-stress! I’d highly reccomend it. I often find myself starting iQuarium just before bed and drifting off to sleep to the sights and sounds of the tiny digital ecosystem.

Update: I just learned my niece wants to give up her real fish tank. She wants me to have it! Looks like Sunny might have some company soon. lol

If you have an iPhone, pick up iQuarium at the App Store.

Digitalis

I promised a while ago to talk about the individual medications I take, and so today, I’ll begin the series by talking about the very first medication I was ever given as a congenital heart patient: Digoxin. As a toddler, my first cardiologist prescribed Digoxin to me in liquid form, and to this day I still remember that sweet, syrupy taste. It was kind of a mint green colour and tasted oh so good. Little did I know just how dangerous it was.

So what exactly is it? Well Digitalis is an extract that comes from the foxglove plant. It’s a beautiful plant displaying rows of bell-shaped flowers when in full bloom. The compounds in the plants’ extract have a pharmacological effect on the heart muscle, both slowing and strengthening the contractions of the atria (upper chambers) and ventricles (lower chambers) of the heart. It’s often prescribed for patients who are having heart rhythm troubles, like atrial fibrilation. By strengthening the heart’s contraction, it allows for better diastolic refill. More bang for the buck. Which in turn allows a fibrilating patient to feel better due to increased cardiac output.

Dosages can change over the years according to body weight. It has a thirty six hour half-life which is pretty long, and so with a half-life of that length, doctors have to be careful to avoid digtalis toxicity in their patients. A build-up of levels can cause a lot of severe side effects like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, anorexia and even death. To make matters worse, the effect of other medications can potentiate – or increase the potency – of digitalis dosages. In my case, my Digoxin levels were lowered upon starting Amiodarone (another powerful anti-arrhythmatic drug). I’m now on the lowest Digoxin dosage I’ve ever been on! 0.0625mg. Precisely because I’m on so many other medications that can potentiate Digoxin’s effectiveness.

Digitalis is probably the best recognized and most often prescribed cardiac drug on the market. I can personally vouch for it’s ability to keep my heart strong and stable. For a long time it was the only heart medication I was on. I’m sure I wouldn’t have had as many productive years without it. Now if only I could taste some of the old green syrup again. Yummy. lol

For more in depth information on Digitalis and it’s many brand names, click through to here:

Digitalis Information on Wikipedia

Saturday Night Live

I’m writing this at 1:15am on a Saturday night. The room is pitch black save for the ethereal glow from the screen of my iPhone, which I’m thumb-typing this on. By now most of the rest of my world has gone to sleep and I’m literally the last one left to turn out the lights.

What am I doing up? Well, this is one of the issues that those of us waiting on the transplant list have to put up with. Difficulty getting to sleep, or sometimes, not being able to sleep at all.

When the rest of the world is bright and noisy, it’s very easy for us to distract ourselves with even the simplest of tasks. Cooking a meal, watching TV, playing a game or talking with others. But when the lights go out and it’s just us alone with our thoughts, well that’s when all the anxiety and doubts come rushing to the forefront again with a vengence.

Earlier tonight, I sat with my nephew watching the movie Monsters vs. Aliens. He’s two, and he was fascinated by the colourful characters on the screen. He grabbed his little blanket and curled up in the chair with me, laying his head gently on my chest, listening to my heart thump. (He already knows to be gentle with his uncle because he needs to get his broken heart fixed).

After we watched the movie, I felt tired, so I retired to my bedroom up the stairs. Sitting down on the bed, I could feel the throbbing tricuspid regurgitation building up in my neck. And it made me think. “Will I be here to watch a movie with him when he’s six?” “If I die, what faint memories will he have of me? Will he remember us watching movies together like we did tonight?” Of course none of these questions can be answered right now. No one will know how all this will ultimately play out. But as I lay down to sleep tonight these questions haunt me. I am alone with my thoughts. My doubts.

Tonight for my sleep troubles I have taken Ativan. My doctor prescribes it for me for my anxiety issues. I try not to depend on it too much since it derives from the Valium / Xanax family which are pretty powerful and addictive drugs, but sometimes it all becomes too much and I can’t help but find a few hours refuge tucked into a couple of tiny sublingual tablets. I hope I don’t become addicted. But that’s the least of my worries now.

So as my eyes slowly become heavy and sleep draws near (Ernie counting noisy balloons or Serta’s sheep have nothing on Ativan) I spend my last moments of lucid thought on something my Aunt said to me on the phone today. Trying to encouage me to keep my chin up through all this, she said: “Remember. We live in hope, and die in despair. So keep hope alive.” My hope, then, is that there will be many more movies to watch with my little nephew in years to come. And that every story we watch, including mine, will have a happy ending.

Goodnight everyone. Sleep well.

Animation Domination

The Academy Award nominations were handed out yesterday, and after looking at the list, what struck me most was how prominently animation features among the contenders. There are seven animated feature films vying for a date with Oscar this year, either in the Best Picture or Best Animated Feature categories. More than in any other year of the Oscars if I’m not mistaken.

As an artform, animation has truly matured. Once considered the style of choice for telling only children’s stories, animation now embraces sophisticated plotlines dealing with some very grown-up themes. And much to our benefit. Animation has a way of telling a story with a unique power and style not available in other mediums. Take 2008′s “Wall•e” for example. Wrapped up in that magically rendered love story was a powerful message about our own out-of-control consumption and, consequently, our growing disconnectedness from one another. And all from the huge conglomerate Disney no less! lol

This year we have two more wonderful examples of how world class animation has the power to reach the masses with poiniant and relevant messages. “Avatar”, now the highest grossing movie of all time, uses the vehicle of an intergalactic love story to spin a yarn about our interconnectedness with the environment and all the life within it. While it could be argued by animation purists that the movie itself is a hybrid of live action and animation (much like the Avatars themselves) it stands to reason that the movie simply wouldn’t be possible without the latest in animation technology and the talent of an army of animators, so for our purposes we’ll let it stand as such.

Entrenched firmly within the animated category, however, is “Up”, the simultaneously tear-jerking and uplifting (no pun intended) tale from Pixar about an old man learning to embrace life and all it’s wonderful adventures again through the friendship of an endearing little boy scout and his dog. As always, Pixar stages and renders it’s scenes magnificantly, and never lets the emotional connection with the audience take a back seat to action.

I won’t get into the intricacies of these films. By now you’ve no doubt already seen them for yourself. But I bring them up because I love animation. I always have. I remember as a kid watching the likes of Bugs Bunny and Wile E. Cyote and frantically trying to draw them like the famous animator Chuck Jones would. I never could though. As I got older I would make up stories of my own for the characters and color them in. Not too much creativity in the narrative department though: the endings nearly always involved my protagonist versus a keg of TNT. lol

As a child of the 70′s and early 80′s I happily rode atop the first wave of home computers into the public’s collective consciousness. We could never afford an Apple. They were (and still are, in my opinion) too expensive. But we bought Atari 800′s and Commodore 64′s and it wasn’t long before I figured out that I could take my cartoon creations digital. I learned to program languages like BASIC and C and invested in software that could draw and paint. Pretty soon it became natural for me to express my creativity through pixels rather than pencils. And a computer animator was born.

Even though I’ve worn many hats over the years – videographer, editor, flash programmer, web designer – I will always have the heart of an animator. Animators are the consumate storytellers: like puppeteers pulling marionette strings, we tell stories through gesture, subtle expressions and frenetic, kenetic bursts of motion. Beat by beat. We get between the words of a story. One frame at a time. Where it lives and breathes.

I can’t officially work anymore. I haven’t been able to since I was sidelined with my heart problem a few years ago. But never one to just sit on the couch and twiddle my thumbs, I’ve instead used my down time to really focus on developing my animation skills at home in my very own studio. And the results have been quite rewarding.

My first foray into 3D computer animation has been Diggedy Dozer, a children’s book series that follows the adventures of a young earthmover and his friends at the Build Co. construction company. Available on Amazon.com! (Gotta get that plug in. lol) I’ve completed two installments so far, with many more planned. There are other characters and stories up my sleeve too, but you’ll just have to wait and see what those are.

I realize that after my heart transplant goes down I shouldn’t waste any time chasing what I want out of the rest of my life. After all, recipients never know how much time they’ll be granted, even if they take really good care of themselves. That’s why as soon as I’m able to work and travel again, I’m going to take a shot at applying to Pixar.

For any animator, Pixar is the dream. They’ve spent years inventing then perfecting their craft, and because of that, are unarguably the best studio in the world. For me, getting a chance to work with people at the pinnacle of the artform would be the culmination of a lifelong search for the ending to my story. The story of a guy with a heart weakened by birth defects, yet strengthened by the will and determination to tell its stories to the world.

You can bet I’ll be watching the Oscars on March 7th, a big bowl of freshly popped popcorn in my lap. No matter what happens, though, you’ll no doubt know by now that I’ll be rooting for an animated film to take home the big prize.

Weight? There’s an App for That!

We all struggle with weight. We all feel better when we have it under control, and crumby when we’re at its mercy. Even moreso if you’re a patient with CHF. Us heart failure folk have to be extra vigilant about weight, because it’s the best indicator of decreasing heart function. Sometimes the weight will start going up long before the traditional symptoms of heart failure will show.

I think one of the most difficult challenges I faced in the beginning, after being told I had to keep a strict eye on my weight situation, was visualizing what my weight was doing over time. Because it’s not so much the day to day numbers that count, but how they’re TRENDING. Only by constructing a graph over a period of days to you get a true picture of what’s happening. And a graph that’s trending upward can warn you of dangers of things like impending decompensation.

Problem is, who really wants to go through all the bother of weighing themselves, then writing it down, then drawing up a graph, then plotting the results? It’s a heck of a lot of work. Well guess what? There’s an app for that. lol.

The iPhone is an incredible little gadget for business people and those on the go. But it can also be a fantastic tool for us heart patients too! It’s App store is packed with countless little gems that will help you do everything from track your weight to plan a diet. Who knew? So in the coming days, I’ll show you four essential apps I use to help keep on top of my health situation, and I’m convinced they’ve all gone a long way to helping me stay stable and functional.

The first one I want to talk about is probably the most straightforward. It’s called “WeightBot” from a developer named TapBots. It’s essentially a weight tracking program, but it’s really elegantly designed and has a few extra features that make it worth the $1.99 asking price.

When you first open WeighBot you’re faced with a giant numerical display. This is your daily weight, which at the outset should read “0.0″. To enter your weight, simply tap the big numbers and use the scale scroller at the bottom to move the numbers up or down the scale. When you find your correct weight, tap the big numbers again and you’re done. That’s it! What could be more simple?

You’ll no doubt notice that the scroller at the bottom has a double function. It’s a scrollable scale, but also a scrollable calendar. Use your thumb to navigate forward or backward in time to see what your weight was on different days. It’s so simple.

But what about the visualizing part, you ask? That’s easy too. Rotate the iPhone or iPod touch on its right side, and the screen will reveal a graph that can display your weight trends three ways: day-to-day, monthly or yearly. Flick your thumb left or right to move forward or backward in time. Now you can accurately see how your weight is trending, which makes it so much easier to spot sudden fluctuations or growing problems.

WeightBot has a few other nifty features I want to share with you. Using the program settings tab allows you to create an account to which you can back up your weight results. Don’t worry, it doesn’t ask for any personal information. Just a username and password. This way, if you ever lose or break your iPhone or iPod Touch, you can simply reinstall WeightBot on your replacement gadget and instantly restore your weight history. I couldn’t imagine having to manually re-enter 2 1/2 years of weight stats!

Another great feature is actually one built right into the iPhone and iPod Touch. Pressing the “home” button in conjunction with the power switch snaps a “photo” of your current screen, meaning that if you snap a picture while looking at your weight graph in WeightBot, you can actually send that image to your doctor! Just look for it in your photo library, then attach it to an email. Now you and your doctor can actually discuss your weight trends while looking at the same graphs. Isn’t technology wonderful?

Let’s face it. We’re now firmly entrenched in the 21st century. And us patients should be looking at cashing in on all the latest technology out there to help us manage our CHF issues. These apps are incredible tools that not only make the work of self-management easier, but also help open up the communication lines between doctor and patient. If using apps on an iPhone can help me better manage my situation and squeeze an extra six months or year out of my tired heart, then you bet I’m doing it. And I’d encourage all other patients – not just CHFers – who could stand to benefit from better self-managent techniques to do the same.

Next time I’ll talk about another favourite app of mine: MedsLog, an iPhone and Touch app that keeps track of your daily meds. Soooo important for pre and post transplant survival.

Until then, if you have an iPhone or Touch, why not give WeightBot a try and tell me what you think? It’s availabe through iTunes on your computer, or directly through the App Store on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Let’s start a hi-tech revolution in self-management!