Ejection Fraction, What's Your Function?

Echo cardiogram #2 showed that Shaun's gigantic heart has improved since six months ago. He went from 15% ejection fraction (which I thought was 20%, as per earlier posts, but which everyone around me insisted I misheard) to 30%, an impressive gain, in my opinion. I had been reading all these terrible online testimonials (I know, I told you not to do that, gentle readers, but here I am not heeding my own advice) about people who were natural athletes, who only ate bark and berries and ran 5 miles a day, and in 4 years their ejection fraction had just steadily declined. So I was extremely relieved with these results.

(For those of you unfamiliar with Shaun, um, he's a natural sports fan. Who likes to sit and watch games. While eating hot dogs and nachos. At the same time.) Shaun's lost 50 pounds, and is doing fairly well at keeping his sodium to a minimum, though these last few months of chaos and frustration and non-stop illness have been wearing on all of us (Shaun's massive anxiety episode in December may have been glossed over here, but it was far from glossy back at home). He found the results okay, but they did make him determined to exercise more, and watch his diet more carefully.

Frankly, when you tell your nursing friends that Shaun's ejection fraction is 30%, they'll probably still look around discreetly for the nearest AED. Lord knows, I do that every time we go out in public. And he may end up with an internal defibrillator (though I have some misgivings about that, mostly because he hasn't had any recorded arrhythmias, that I know of, though I am attracted to the idea of implanting superpowers in one's body). But given the shit storm that was 2010 for us? I will take a 30% ejection fraction and run gleefully around the room. Provided there's an AED & some salt-free nuts.