Heart issue...what?!

May 27 2011

The night before Disco Leo gives me a call with the results of my echo and says...
"Noreen, your ejection fraction of your heart is surprisingly low. Normal is 50-60% you are at 35%."
WTF?! What else can go wrong.  If I have a heart issue, it changes the whole treatment plan! We are not sure if I fainted because of dehydration or because I may have a heart issue. Um, didn't I go to the freaking ER in December for chest pain?!  They said I was fine! Anyway, we get a MUGA scan scheduled for after my bone marrow biopsy.  The MUGA will give us a better read on my heart.

Lindsay picks me up and we catch up on the usual.  She is such good mom to me:) We get to NW and I get prepped for the bone marrow biopsy.  Lindsay went to grab me some food because she wanted to make sure I was eating!  The doctor explains how he will go into my iliac crest (or hip bone) and will numb me up.  Unfortunately he can't really numb up the area completely because he needs my feedback to tell him when I have pain.  He is essentially going in blind and pulling a small little cork of my bone, but as he probes he will hit some nerves in the area.  If I feel a sharp pain, I have to say pain, and he retracts the needle and tries again.  I'm on my stomach and I can't see everything he is doing but he did a good job of explaining everything to me that I am not too nervous. I feel pressure and discomfort.  I'm not crying. Yet. He gets to the "corking" process and I say "Pain", he tries again, "Pain", he tries again "Pain". I start crying.  I feel such a weird pressure and pain.  He tries again and starts the "corking". I feel like someone is hammering my bone from the inside. He pulls the needle out and says we are done.  We got a good piece.  First of all, I am lucky that they didn't have to do it on both sides of my hip as some patients do.  Lindsay did such a great job of comforting and calming me.  I think at one point she wanted to take the Dr. out! Ok, so it wasn't that bad. But I never want to go through that again!

The resident ends up wanting to give me a bag of fluids because I fainted the day before.  As I was receiving fluids, my MUGA scan got scheduled.  My day started at 11 am at the hospital and now its 3 pm.  I go register for the MUGA scan and the front desk says I have no insurance.  I get a little pissy and snap.  "I've been here like 5 times the past week. I have insurance. It's in the system."  I end up calling and sorting it out when the guy could've easily done that for me but whatever.  I'm real crabby at this point.  I get called back for the MUGA.  The nurse explains that the test is about 2 hours.  I lose it once again.  No one told me how long the test would be.  No one said I would have to get poked with needles again.  At this point, I feel as if I'm not human.  Getting poked and prodded every minute.  I am completely frustrated, broken down and sad.  On top of that, I was hungry!  Luckily, they injected me with some stuff, let me go get a quick bite to eat and then take the scan.  Ughhhh!  This is getting real old real fast and it hasn't even really started.

I get a phone call the following Wednesday with my MUGA results.  57%!  Good.  But we can't have 2 tests that don't match up.  So Disco Leo orders a cardiac MRI and a consult with a cardiologist. Done and done...

Cardiac MRI on June 4....
I'm scheduled for chemo June 8 and we still don't know what chemo regimen I will be on.  ABVD is every other week with no radiation or Standford V every week with radiation.

I get a call from Disco Leo and he says that my cardiologist will follow up with me but they all decided to start with the ABVD treatment along with heart meds.

Next stop is round one of chemo to kill this nasty bitch of a disease!