Let me start by saying that this fall/winter was a very bad "cold" season for me. For the most part I had one cold after another from October through December.
I woke up Christmas day with what I call "the Whirlies". It is a feeling I get after my first glass of wine or beer. The mild light headed with a slight balance issue. I sat down until it passed, then got up and headed into the day.
The next day and for every day going into New Years eve, I had what I thought was a progressively worsening chest cold. When I would lay down at night I couldn't breathe, and I could feel my heart pounding in my chest.
By January 10 it had gotten so bad that I was pretty sure I had pneumonia, so I saw my Doc, who sent me for a chest x-ray. That revealed no pneumonia, but mild pulmonary effusion (the doc explained it as fluid around but not in the lungs) and an enlarged heart.
So... off to the cardiologist I was sent.
For whatever reason, the referral my Doc sent to the cardiologist was not sent, so I asked them to send it again, and again. Weekly for almost a month before I finally asked the stupid receptionist at the cardiologist for her fax number and had it sent there.
So, I get in with the cardiologist, who looks at my x-rays, has an Echo-cardiogram done, and informs me that it appears I've been in congestive heart failure since Christmas, it was mid-February at this point, and fortunately my symptoms had either gotten better, or I had gotten so used to them that they weren't as much of a problem anymore.
I choose to believe the symptoms had gotten better.
So, in I'm sent for an angiogram and a trans-esophegal cardiogram (TEE).
Sidebar here, if anyone needs to have one of these, and you find yourself still awake during the process, you might ask for more sedative.
Partway through the process my chest starts feeling extremely strange. I commented on that, startling several of the technicians in the room, who replied with "YOU'RE AWAKE?!?".
Admittedly this made me chuckle.
I was relieved to hear them state that there were no blockages. Yay me!
What they found was that my mitral valve has severe regurgitation, and two other valves are mildly leaky.
The doc has me on meds, and he has informed me that if I exercise more regularly, it should fix the problem. The mitral valve leak is not caused by a problem with the valve, but with damage and weakness in the left ventricle.
I will be re-evaluated in a few months to see if that is helping. If not, the doc has indicated that I will probably be put on a heart transplant list.
So... it's been an interesting year so far.