that’s what it’s there for. So, I’m able to be more active now but the problem now is because I am considered obese, I’m still limited in some things I can and can’t do exercise-wise.
However, the only caveat to having congestive heart failure is that you have to rest. Rest actually helps everything, your mind, your body, and puts you back in rhythm.
How are you managing your congestive heart failure today?
I pretty much try to limit all carbs, if I have any at all. I’ll limit it to two times a week and make sure I have plenty of vegetables. I make sure I eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. I’m in water aerobics, I go for walks when the weather permits, and I take a sitting drum class. Just doing whatever I can to try and get the weight down.
You mentioned that you felt a lot of your congestive heart failure was due to the stress of being a working single parent, how are you dealing with that aspect now that all of your children are grown up and out of the house?
Well, because I’m still in a stressful employment situation, I’m now realizing that I’m not going to be able to pull the weight of the stress of the job and my health. So, it’s to the point where I have to make a decision.
Do I want to keep this level of stress to meet financial goals or do I want to find something different that I can get into and still have a quality of life being with my grandchildren, with less stress? So, right now I’m trying to create multiple streams of income to help me transition out of an extremely stressful situation that I am in now.
With my children all off to start their own lives, I started looking at things that I actually had a passion for and like to do effortlessly, like cooking. I always had friends asking me to bake cakes for them for the holidays and they would pay me.
So, through this little inkling, I started a catering and cooking demo business called Mama How You Cook This? where we do in-house cooking to workshop demos and provide outside catering to anyone from individuals and small meetings to destination events.
What would you recommend to someone going through the same diagnosis?
Listen. Listen to your body, listen to your doctors and do everything you can to meet those goals. So many times we always think, oh well it’s not that bad, I’ll be okay, just let me finish this or do that. And you just keep on making it worse and worse. You got to listen to your body and you got to listen to your situation because everybody’s situation is different.
There are people out there in way worse condition than you and there are people out there in way better condition than you. You have to deal with your realities and don’t feel bad about it. I used to feel bad about it and guilty, which caused more stress and for it to get worse. So, you have to do what you have to do in order to meet those goals.
Tia Muhammad, BS, is an award-winning freelance content & media creative, copywriter, blogger, digital designer, and marketing consultant. She owns the boutique content and digital media company, jackieGLDN|studio.