Hello Everyone - my husband was diagnosed with severe bi-ventricular cardiomyopathy and chf with an EF of 10% last April. He was 37 at the time, and it was completely unexpected. They could never find a cause and chalked it up to a virus.
We were given very grim statistics about recovering from an EF of 10%; we were told that he MAY recover some of his heart function but that it would probably never be normal. He was evaluated by the transplant team and put on a battery of medications. We were told that this would severely impact his long term life expectancy.
I wanted to share with you that 8 months after this terrible diagnosis, in December of last year, his EF was back up to 45%, and all of his tests showed no indication of heart failure! He is feeling great, exercising, watching his sodium intake very carefully, and still taking medication...but he no longer has heart failure! During the time between his diagnosis and his reevaluation, he dramatically changed his diet, did as much exercise as he could, monitored his BP, HR, and other statistics very carefully.
It was a life changing experience for sure, and we know that he will still have to watch things carefully and take very good care of himself. But I thought you all should know that good things CAN and DO happen, so hang in there.
Erin