I was driving the taxi for most of the time. 20 years.
I'm 61 years old and I work in the CWT Program the VA hospital.
I worked for the United States Postal Service I worked there 25 years I retired.
I ended up joining the Long Beach VA band
After I retired from the military. I applied and became a teacher.
I worked 20 years at the Lakeland on fire department and I spent 10 years in the Air Force.
I was employed and self-taught welder metal fabricator all from the military to until I retired.
and this is a fish gig we live on the water.
one thing I did, was I built five portable hangars for the B-2 stealth bomber.
I didn't want to use the CPAP because he was uncomfortable.
and I was afraid and I see the difference now I wake up more refreshed.
and when I'm using it I'm using it every day but all of a sudden I feel different better and right now even why my nose
is stuff I put it on and it clears the way. Instead of our giving me problems.
you know learning the Golden Rule. You know teaching about the protractor.
You know learning ABCs 1 2 3. that's what it was all about.
You know so I did that very fulfilling and because I did at risk.
I did that you know for my 20 years and then after that I went to the police department
and that's when they realized that I had congestive heart failure at that time.
So but I don't like that slow me down you know.
So they told me to try to try the machine, try the machine and I sleep a lot better using machine.
I feel air flowing and everything else.
but then they showed us you know that there was different types of masks that you can use when you sleep.
So I bought into that idea you know I didn't have to look like the
You know what movie was on it "Silence of the Lamb" you know I gonna wearing. know, I mean I couldn't deal with that.
But a the mask was very small especially around your ears and real comfortable.
That's a military name I got bear yeah cuz a friend of mine he went down in an airplane crash
and he called he named me bear a lot people think cuz it's my size
but he named me bear cuz I was able to sleep through artillery fire so he said I was hibernating
so he just start calling me bear and so I just carried the name in his memory , Bear.
you know it's a program that aids us daily in our health as far as like
our blood pressure, our sugar, us being a diabetic.
telehealth when we call our readings in each morning they go over our readings
and if something is not right especially with me I'll get a call from Carmen.
I've been here on this earth 59 years and since I've been with the VA
you know I can honestly say if God was to call me home today
I can honestly say that without the medical attention that I was getting from the VA
I believe I would have been gone a whileback a long time ago.
I have Buffalo Bill with me who is a prop used to for doctors and nurses to practice there are tube feedings on patient.
Telehealth when I weigh myself and take my blood pressure every morning. and its great tool and it's got me to lose a lot of weight and its fabulous.
I used to end up in the hospital all the time with congestive heart failure
but since I've been in the telehealth program I haven't been in the hospital but now that I got somebody monitoring me
and saying hey mr. Kriegler you don't had a weight gain or all this what are you doing. You know control my fluid intake and I got a method of doing that
so I'm learned a lot from the telehealth program.
From my house to the mailboxes a couple hundred yards. I'd have to ride to my mailbox and back.
Now I can walk down there and I don't want fast but I can walk to my mailbox and walk back to my house.
When I asked me over the rehab place what I wanted to do and that was to learn to walk better.
When you start your exercises and everything they hook a heart monitor up to you while you're doing that.
Most all of my friends around me told me that I was looking better and I can walk further now and I could when I started the program.
When you start the rehab program they start you start the rehab program they start you off low and build you up till they getting you more and more.
They say, Beryl next week you got to do 20 instead of 18 .
Well I was fat dumb and happy and thought I was healthy as a horse and just overnight I came down with congestive heart failure hospitalized twice or three times three times
and when this program was offered the cardio rehab I thought it would be a good idea to try it
and it worked out very wellfor me I gained my strength my ejection fracture improved during that period of time.
I still used the same principles of riding my bike and going to the gym and doing the stationary bike at the gym and so getting on the bicycle
and also losing a little bit of my equilibrium riding they wheeled bicycle was one thing I had stopped doing
so with the workouts that Warren and Mike put me through I gained my strength, my knees still bothered me but I still riding my bike.
I have noticed that he is breathing a lot better after he does his rehab and his walking is the hundred-percent.
So the biggest improvement that I found or the biggest change in our life was when Russell started his therapy
because he was so sick and it seemed like it was a roller coaster ride with his congestive heart failure .
The way it was and then when he started the rehab he immediately started doing better
and the more he did it the better he felt the stronger he got the more he got back to normal.
Life became back to normal and so we are just very very happy and I'm a happy woman because I have my husband healthy.
People come complain about the veterans not getting good treatment I just want not getting good treatment.
I just want to say I've been coming to Tampa to the VA hospital for over 20 years and they have treated me very very well.