INSPIRATION

LIVING WITH HEART FAILURE

Tammi's Story

Meet this amazing woman, Tammi Nencki.
Tammi was diagnosed with Heart Failure on August 9th 2013, she has had a long and hard battle for a good few years now, but she’s managed to change her life around through exercise, diet and her own strong will to live.
It all started on her 40th birthday, She and her partner decided to go on a little bit of a camping trip for the weekend.

She was simply putting ice into a cooler when she noticed something didn’t feel right, she had no symptoms or pain she just had an odd feeling something wasn’t right with her body. She had no numbness in the arm, no chest pains or sweating anything like that, it was silent.

So she got herself to the emergency room to have herself checked out to see if anything was wrong, it was in the emergency room where she had numerous tests done to determine if she had something wrong or not, they did an echocardiogram of hear heart, which is a type of ultrasound test that uses high-pitched sound waves that are sent through a device called a transducer. The device picks up echoes of the sound waves as they bounce off the different parts of your heart.

She was told that she had a blood clot in her heart which caused her to have a heart attack which is what she felt while out camping, but the echocardiogram came back with worse news. She has Heart Failure.

A normal person’s heart and the amount of blood that gets pumped in and out of the heart are around 60 to 65% for a normal person, Tammi’s tests showed she only had 17% of that happening within her heart.

She got told her heart was very weak but despite all that her heart was still doing “ok” for the time being, she didn’t have to have any machines or anything for help. She met with cardiologists, dietitians, nutritionists, and nurses which helped explain what heart failure was and how a person might get it, the answers ranged from family genetics, various viruses in the air and weak heart muscles. Tammi’s was a mixture of a virus and the other part was family genetics.

Tammi’s farther died at the age of 50 from a heart attack, her gran died in her 60s 70s from a heart attack while she was sleeping, she also has an aunt which is alive today but she has a pace maker in her, she has a long line of heart problems within her family, so she kind of knew what to expect, but still evermore frightening.

As she was sat there listening to the doctors just chirping away she went deep into her thoughts, thinking to herself that she’s only 40 years old, you would expect it from an older person, retired people, in their late 50s or more, this scared her, she’s never heard of heart failure before and didn’t really know what it was, but she knew heart attacks, the one she has is considered a “silent” heart attack, no symptoms just under the radar.

As soon as she was released from the hospital she fell into a state of depression and hopelessness, she couldn’t believe that this was happening to her, all she could think about was “why me?”. She was put on a special kind of diet to help her, they told her to watch what you eat, watch your sodium intake and your water intake, despite all that has happened and all that she felt she didn’t follow the diet, she explains “what do you do when your depressed? And addicted to food, you eat and you eat and you eat”
Her depression and her fear took control over her, her household she was living in at the time wasn’t really helping her situation, her ex-partner and herself disagreed on the diet and types of foods that should be in the household at that time, so she just accepted it and went with it. She wouldn’t have any salads and even if she did it would be loaded with unhealthy dressings, full of fatty foods, but at the time she didn’t care, she thought to herself it was all over anyway.

All you could think about was “why me? Poor me, pity me, it was all about me”. When she came home from the hospital she was always very tired, doing the simplest tasks took it out of her, climbing the stairs gave her a heavy heart and chest, it was like running for a marathon.

The medication she was taking made her feel very dizzy and weak, she had to sit down to wash the dishes, she had to sit down to make dinner, she always felt like she was going to fall over, she thought that maybe she was on the wrong medication.

All what was going on with her body made her feel even worse, causing her depression to worsen. About 2 years after she finally came to realize that she needed to do something about her weight and her health, she knew if she kept it up she was going to die. She stared eating healthier, still on a water restriction, she would eat healthy about 1-3 times a week, but she wouldn’t exercise still, she still struggled with exercise.

Walking to her friend’s house over the road was challenging for her, she would sweat a lot and she found it quite horrible, so this made her not want to exercise with the excess sweat, it just wasn’t in the system for her and she was still quite down and depressed.
3 months after hospital she met with a cardiologist, which he told her she could possibly need a heart transplant, told her she needed a gastric bypass fitted and she needed to lose weight immediately. She was so scared and didn’t help with the depression, all she could think about was “why me, pity me, poor me, I ate all time, I was depressed, I didn’t exercise just sat on the couch it was terrible”.

Her Friends tried to help her, getting her out of the house more to walk and do a little exercise “pfft no no no I aint going, I don’t want to sweat, I won’t even make it to the stop sign without passing out, im not doing it”.

In February, she saw the cardiologist again and they measured her weight, she was 361lbs, when she was first diagnosed with heart failure she was 315lbs, so it 2 years tammi gained 50+ pounds in weight, she still didn’t do anything about it, she was just looking back in the past thinking to herself “why? Why didn’t I do anything”.

The cardiologist told her she needed to start making changes in her life right now! Before it’s too late, Tammi’s biggest change was moving out of her ex’s house and moved into her own place, she was living in her ex’s home for about 10 years.
March 20th, she moved out finally. One week later Tammi Died. From complications, before that week she cannot mention. But she wasn’t eating, she was throwing up all the time, all the water she drank came back up she just couldn’t keep anything down and her anxiety was through the roof!

One day she went to lay down for a nap because she didn’t get to sleep much, all her thoughts and fears keeping her awake at night, it was March 29th at 10:45am She died. Her defibrillator went off in her chest, “thank god it went off, if it didn’t I would have been dead”. She rushed herself to the hospital still in pain from the shock of the defibrillator, “it felt like I was kicked by a horse, my jaw hurt so bad”, the doctors told Her there that it was her defibrillator that went off and saved her life, if It didn’t go of she would be dead right now so she’s lucky.

Her current cardiologist was on vacation so another one had to step in, he had a read of her medical records and said to her straight up, “if you don’t change your fucking ways you are going to die tammi, you have to change your diet, you need to exercise, stop smoking and drinking, if you don’t do these changes, you will die”.
Since then she had been changing her ways, she’s made a Facebook page doing video logs of her progress, talking about her feelings, her thoughts and how to deal with heart failure because she said no one had ever really done videos about it.

Since she got released from hospital, 29th July 2016 she has successfully lost a massive 95lbs!, the diet she’s on had made quite a lot of restrictions but her cardiologist was very impressed by her change, he was that impressed he told her she should be a spokesperson for heart failure so she can help and inspire others. When she was first diagnosed with heart failure there were no videos or posts or anything like what she’s doing about the subject, just articles talking about watching your weight, things on food but nothing about emotions and how you felt, what you went through, when your diagnosed, all she could think about during the whole nightmare she was faced with was “why me, pity me, poor me” had bad depression and she never wants to go to that place again, it was very tough.
Tammi went through a lot in her life, so much fear and pain, all the struggles and pressure she was under, and she made it through it all by changing the way she thinks, by pushing herself hard and keeping herself alive.

If a woman at 361lbs with heart failure can battle and lose weight, then, why aren’t you?!
If any of you have any amazing stories to tell, please email me and let me know I would love to hear and read about it all and write it to inspire others!

Thank you, Tammi, for sharing your story.
Her facebook page: - https://www.facebook.com/weightlossjourneywithheartfailure/
Go check her out and support her!