Category Archives: Progress Reports

Reversing Heart Disease and An Anniversary To Celebrate

Progress Reports, , , , , , ,

Well trumpets please, today is an important day!

It marks the 5-year anniversary of Bill’s “event.”  He prefers “event” to heart attack, and says it was the whack upside the head he needed to realize it was time to up his game.

reversing heart disease fixitplan

Five Years Ago Today …

Chugging along back then, Bill was overweight, struggling with uncontrolled blood pressure (though recently on BP medication),  his cholesterol was somewhat elevated along with his LDL and triglycerides.  Even though we thought we ate pretty good, and even though we exercised 2-3 times a week, his heart attack fired the warning shot.   We had work to do!

We are SO fortunate to have been in the ER checking out the chest pain we hoped was  heartburn because he had the heart attack right then and there!  Blessfully resulting in no permanent damage to his heart.  I’ve told this whole story here in:  “The Beginning.”

We desperately wanted to know “CAN THIS BE FIXED?  HOW?”

Continue reading Reversing Heart Disease and An Anniversary To Celebrate →

Progress Report~Fall 2015

Progress Reports, , , , , , , , ,

Bill Peterson fixitplan

Progress Report Fall 2015A B+ you say?  What?
Well I kind of expected it.

 

Life stuff over the summer caused some stress and a wavering in focus on our exercise program and even some on our diet.  And there’s the irony! Because when motivation suffers, we all know that exercise and eating well are the best things you can do to combat the blues and stressful life stuff!

We haven’t been terrible.. we didn’t completely fall off the wagon and abandon our healthy focus.  Still plant-based, mostly whole foods, avoiding sugar and so on, but too often our dinner meals were getting skimpy on the greens for example.IMG_20150422_140836

And the gym..  well.. sometimes talking about the stress stuff, or computer time on Bill’s photography passion gobbled up the day before we knew it and we’d miss the gym.  So we didn’t always get the cardio time we know we need.   And this seemed to lead 20150914_215036to staying up too late, a little too much late-night popcorn (no butter of course), along with broken sleep and wakefulness in the night.  So things have not been going as well as they had been.  Our daily routine just plain got out of whack. Continue reading Progress Report~Fall 2015 →

Progress Report ~ Spring 2015

Progress Reports, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Reversing Heart Disease … How Are We Doing?

“We cannot make good news out of bad practice.” ~Edward R. Murrow

Good News Reverse heart disease progress reportDr. Crandall walked into the exam room, test results in hand, grinned at Bill and said his stress test results were GREAT!–adding less than 2% of his patients score so well on the test.   The nuclear images were all good and Bill’s blood pressure response during the treadmill exercise phase of the test was also good.

Taking a good look at Bill, patting him here and there, he was happy to see him looking so fit, obviously keeping up with his exercise.

It’s a little more than two years now since Bill’s heart attack, and more than a year since Dr. Crandall said he was healthy enough to get off all the medication (he now takes only a baby aspirin and niacin daily).  So this consultation was a big deal for us! It was time to get our report card and see the results from the lifestyle changes we’d put in place more than two years ago.  To take a closer look at Bill’s heart, a nuclear stress test was prescribed (you can read about it here), a heart ultrasound, and advanced lab work. This was his first heart ultrasound.  The ultrasound looks at the structure and the valves of the heart where, in contrast, the stress test looks at the arteries.  So we were very interested! Continue reading Progress Report ~ Spring 2015 →

Progress Report ~ Winter 2014

Progress Reports, , ,

Progress Report  Report A small

The exciting news about this post is that nothing much happened, and in this case that’s pretty darned good.   We’re talking about Bill’s latest checkup.  The big event in this un-event was Bill’s labwork, the first since Dr. Crandall let him off the last of the prescription meds eight months earlier.   So what was the report card going to show?  For those of us like me that want to know the nitty details on these things it went like this:

Progress Report Fixitplan EKG

 

The first order of business was an EKG.   No surprises and all was good.

 

Progress Report Fixitplan Chauncey Crandall office

 

Next we waited to see Dr. Crandall  and I used this time to review my list of questions (I always have questions and blessfully Dr. Crandall is very patient with every one.)

 

 

 

Dr. Crandall was pleased Bill is maintaining a healthy weight and looking fit and  strong.  And now it was time to review the results from his blood workup. Continue reading Progress Report ~ Winter 2014 →

Progress Report Spring 2014

Progress Reports, , , , ,

DRUMROLL PLEASE!

Progress Report Progress Report Fix It PlanBill is all the way back!

Bill is Back thanks to Fix It Plan

I have some fantastic news to share about Bill’s latest progress report!  It works!  He’s off the meds!  He’s no longer required to take any prescription medication.   His blood pressure is stable, lipid profile excellent, and he’s maintaining his weight loss.  This was our target, a major goal in this journey–reversing his heart disease.  It symbolizes a younger, healthier Bill. Continue reading Progress Report Spring 2014 →