Warning about taking care of yourself while driving...

I'm just hoping to help out you people who have no idea yet. I basically ran myself almost in the ground. I had switched to the best job I ever had driving. Had 2 to 3 days at home every week. Did a dedicated coast to coast Hazmat run. This with a small company of only four drivers and the owner drove. Was out of the Cleveland OH area.
I had been working out of Denver for a few companies. One I stayed with for a long time until it was sold and they brought in the BS. Anyway...When I went to work to the best most recent. My left foot looked like it belonged on a mummy. Toes all shriveled up, brown foot. I decided to start working out. Got it in shape. Knew it was lack of circulation. I got to doing two or three little workouts a day while driving. Third was an extra in evening if I didn't feel good. Wasn't feeling good alot at this time. I did an evening workout (Only ten minutes long) and I felt blah, nothing. My heart was telling me; "We ain't playing this game no more. You better see a doctor". I had told my boss I needed time off to see a doctor. Hard arranging with small company and three of us doing this dedicated run. I also had to wait for the 23rd for my Medicare to kick in.
Finally in first part of January. Boss got me time off. Told me to take two weeks off paid. That shoudl take care of it. We both ended up laughing about that one. I went to my new General Practitioner. 5 minutes with her and she told me to go over to the emergency room at the hospital. That hospital had me lay in a bed for two weeks waiting for me to die. I'm not joking. That's how bad of shape I was in. Cardiovascular Disease. I ended up spending three months in that hospital. Six surgeries. 8 stints put in me. Amputated my left foot. It had gone gangrene from infection caused by lack of circulation.
I have to say this is been one heck of a year. Right now I'm attending Cardiac Rehab. It's exercise three days a week. I'm just now able to put half my weight on my prosthesis. So I can stand rather strong now. Will take months to full adaptation. I could say a whole lot more about this year. Do want to say..basically my cardiovascular system was trying to choke my heart to death. Heart wasn't doing good. There's an EF reading off an Echo Cardiogram. Just as benchmark. It must be 55% to survive open heart surgery. Mine was 33. By June it had gone down to 26. I told myself I better do something. Started walking on the track at the Y. In September, I got them to do another Echo. It came up 44.
I think about all the people who are working with me now. There are a bunch of them. I have a few doctors. I appreciate them all so much. I also appreciate Medicare. Don't go with those insurance plans on top of Medicare. They'll refuse to pay any costly procedure. They all pull that BS. United Health is the worst. Just stick with Medicare, a supplement, and drug insurance. Medicare and the others have never refused to pay anything. I had 'iffy" ones like my prosthesis cost $28 grand. No problem. They paid.
I do want to say my ten years driving OTR was a fantastic experience. Other night I saw a map of the country. Looked at it and thought to myself that I knew it all. Pick out a city and I'll tell you about it. Tons of stories I could tell. I wouldn't have passed on it for the world. Even though at first I didn't want to drive a truck. I knew I had circulation problems.
The last ten years OTR. I drove well over a million miles.

 

Tales from the Hospital.... I thought you all would enjoy this.
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Back in January. They had released me from the Hospital. Not sure the reasoning. Might have been fear of insurance not paying? They ended up finding out I had real good insurance. Anyway...they let me go. I started hallucinating. It was a bad state of mind I didn't like at all. I started thinking someone was in my house. Called the cops a couple times. They asked me to get help. Longer story short. Paramedics hauled me back to the hospital. Was gone 3 days. I got out of that ambulance. Not 30 feet from it. I had a very old woman doctor approach me. She said: ######! These people don't know what they're doing! You don't take an infection you haven't beaten and throw pain pills on top of it! You should expect your patient to hallucinate! My infection was my left foot. My pain pills were Oxycodone. I was under arrest with the Hospital, legally. They admitted me back in. The next morning an administrator came to my room. She apologized. Admitted it was all the hospitals fault. She legally released me from custody.
In the hospital I never had a problem hallucinating. They had 3 IV's in me. One was a strong antibiotic. They would adjust it every six hours based on other readings and blood tests.
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Toward the end. The last surgery they wanted to do was to amputate my foot. They wanted to get as good of circulation as possible for my leg to heal first. I had fallen asleep in the recliner in the room. I woke up sometime in the middle of the night. I was surrounded by a pool of blood out about ten feet. My left foot had cracked open and bled. I reached over and pushed the nurse button. They freaked. Every nurse on that floor came into my room. They cleaned it all up. Started feeding me blood through one of the IV's. I had three IV's.
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Toward the end they had to redo one of my IV's. It was getting tough. I had been poked so many times. 4 nurses couldn't do it. They said; We should get so and so. She's really good at this. She came and she did it. I said to her; Will you marry me?
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All through this. Pain increased in my body. Just by laying in a bed for three months. From the very first rehab session in the hospital. The pain started to decrease. At the end they transferred me to a rehab hospital. They told me their job was to train me to make it around without my prosthesis. I wouldn't have it always. Three rehab sessions a day for an hour. Toward the end, they were hitting me hard. I had to work hard. Making it up steps using an upside down kitchen trash can with one leg isn't easy. The harder they worked me. The more the pain went away. Till at the very end I didn't have anymore pain. BTW; By the time I got out. My weight was down to 145 pounds. I usually ran about 180 when driving. Right now I'm 184.
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At one point. My boss visited me in the hospital. He was doing my run. Which required him to take a 34 here. That was so nice. That was the last time I saw him. I've talked with him on the phone since.