JP Wiest

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.


We very much appreciate everyone reaching out to us as a family and to JP during this time.   We felt it was time to get a Caring Bridge site up so we could update people as we walk this journey together.  


This page is JP's Story.  We thought, "Where do we start?"  There are LOTS of stories about JP and we could be here for a while.  JP is known to tell long stories and short stories and everything between.  In the interest of time and others reading this we are going to make the assumption you know his story from the beginning.  However when we asked him to sum up his story in one phrase it would be simple and none other than "There are truck payments to be made, so keep the wheels rolling and keep on truck'n."  


JP was diagnosed with Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) in 2016.  CHF is when the heart muscle does not pump blood as well as it should.    Blood enters the heart but then blood pools in the chambers and the heart isn't pumping it out the way it should.  Blood carries a great deal of fluid, fluid that needs to move through the body and exit.  JP's heart isn't pumping the blood and fluid out as it should and is causing fluid to build up around his heart and abdomen which causes issues with breathing and is exhausting for him.   


JP's heart has deteriorated over the years.  The doctors describe his heart as large (we all knew that) and it's lazy.   His heart doesn't want to pump the way it did in prior years.  CHF is a condition that is managed but it is not reversible and the heart becomes weaker over time.  CHF has 4 stages and  JP is now in CHF Stage 4.  We as his family are managing his condition with him along side a team of knowledgeable doctors, caring nurses and now the calm of Hospice.  We will use this site to keep people updated as we travel this journey.  We are keeping the wheels rolling here as he requested.