Day to day is all consuming. It’s frustrating because every decision that you make as far as food activity affects your sugars. The frustrating thing is many times what you’ve done, you think you’re doing the right thing and your sugars are high or you’re low, and that varies from day to day. And again, I think the most frustrating thing is that diabetes takes up just so much of your time and there’s never an escape. It’s always there.

How does this affect my day-to-day life? It doesn’t really affect my day-to-day life, except sometimes, I’ll get a little bit of heart pain, like when I’m exercising. Frustrations or challenges, just being able to, making sure I take my medicine daily is probably a challenge. I don’t like taking medicine, but I know I have to. And what have I done to adjust to these challenges? I just have like a reminder card for my medications.

There are no frustrations on a daily basis. Condition is treated with medication. I have to maintain current weight and make sure that I am ingesting the proper food.

The way it affects my life is I never know from day to day if I’m going to have a good day or bad day. I can wake up and I feel great, like today, and able to act like a normal person. Nobody knows the difference. But other days I wake up, I’ve got very low blood pressure, I’m so tired I can barely move. And even fixing a simple dinner can be a challenge. So it’s just, it’s very, very variable. However, I’ve learned by doing part-time work, especially flexible work from home, I can… My husband, I’m very honest with him, and I tell him what kind of day I’m having and we make do. I always have enough food around that is something very simple, that we can do that if all else fails.

My husband and I have had some challenges in our relationship as far as not being able to be a couple, to do the things that couples do, our sex life is affected, our day to day activities, our date night. Just anything that we used to do together has changed, even our cooking because the cooking has to change to be adapted to my diet. I also panic and have chest pains, a lot of times I can’t go out, and so we’ve just tried to adapt by taking our medicine and try to keep the stress level down and just do what the doctor tells me to do.

Hi. My day-to-day issues regarding my heart make it so that it’s very unpredictable. I actually have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon. I have almost all my life had mitral valve prolapse, but I also have scleroderma and it’s causing thickening around my heart and chest pains. So from a day-to day-perspective, I sometimes get very high palpitations. I wear a Fitbit to help me monitor my heart rate. And it’s always unpredictable if I’m going to need to sit down and rest.

Hello. My heart condition impacts my day-to-day life by making it difficult to walk around or to climb stairs, to do things that require exertion or… Vacuuming and things like that. Because of all the medications that I take, it’s difficult for me to… There’s a lot of side effects and so I have difficulty focusing. It also has an effect on my mental condition. It makes me depressed sometimes and causes me anxiety and I get overwhelmed by all of the things I need to do, the doctors, the medicines, the tests, the specialists, sometimes the hospital. And it’s very frustrating to try to do all the things you need to do to keep yourself healthy, and to satisfy all of the doctors and specialists, and keeping up with all of your medications and tests and what not, and what they expect of you to be responsible in life as far as what you eat and how you exercise and how you take care of yourself. I’ve adjusted to these challenges just over time. It’s taken time to set a schedule and every month sit down and dole out all the pills and try to keep the timing going through every day. I have alarms and apps that help me. Everything revolves around my heart condition and my other conditions, all day long. It’s like a full time job. And then, like I said, I have to take it day by day. And in fact, it’s really kind of hour by hour, to try and make it through the challenge of being sick and having a disease and trying to get better.

My daughter has stamina issues and doesn’t keep up very well, so we have implemented using a power wheelchair. So when we go on walks or do things, she can keep up with us. That is from her heart condition and her pulmonary hypertension lung condition. She has low oxygen sat, so we’ve implemented using several asthma action plans and several inhalers to help with her lung condition.

I have changed my eating habits. I guess the challenges that I’ve faced are trying not to have another heart attack and in order to do that, I changed my eating habits. I stopped smoking. I started to exercise more. Mine was basically stress induced, so I’ve tried to lower my stress levels, but I do still have a lot of fear of stress causing another heart attack.

Well, I’ve had to completely change the way that I eat. I have to be more diligent about eating all of my meals and making sure that they are heart healthy, because if I eat things that contain too much salt I tend to swell up in my legs, or fingers, or arms because I’ve got too much sodium in me. Sometimes I just get real out of breath. I have to take a lot of breaks and rest if I’m out and about and walking. I’m very young still so I feel like I shouldn’t having to be dealing with getting out of breath just walking up the steps sometimes, and that’s frustrating.

I have to take medicine on a daily basis, and just watch my heartbeat.

Good morning. I am the patient. The frustrations that I’ve encountered are, inability to do the things I used to do, get shortness of breath, exhaustion. Sometimes I’ll get PVCs, palpitations that’ll keep me from enjoying myself. To adjust to these challenges, I’ve worked very hard with my medical team to adjust my medications, get something that works for me, started a new diet, lost 43 pounds, and I’m starting back into exercise, which has helped. But I still face some of those limitations that I described earlier.

My condition impacts my day-to-day life by not allowing me to do a lot of the things that I would like to do. I adopted my four year old granddaughter. So having a heart condition right now doesn’t allow me to run outside and go bike riding and do things with her. So we try and do things that are a little more toned back for me, and she’s really good about it.

My condition has significantly impacted the way that I live. Up until the virus and pandemic hit I was having a lot of issues with walking, going to the store, going out anywhere and now with the pandemic, I rarely am able to go anywhere. As far as how I cope with it, normally it’s a day to day coping strategy. When I do have to go to the store, obviously I am unable to walk, so I have to use a motorized scooter. It does get frustrating, but all I can do is just sit back and take it one day at a time.

I’m the patient and it’s affected our day to day life. I have no energy, my desire to do things have changed, and it’s impacted my wife by depression and myself, depression.