Not How I Expected My Week To Go
Mar. 4th, 2015 11:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
przedFor the past few months I've been going through a number of medical tests as various doctors try to figure out what the heck to do with the horrible acid reflux I've been having that's been immune to all drugs. My GP decided he was going to run some cardiac tests just to make sure there wasn't anything going on with my heart. Which led to me having a stress test on Monday.
This did not go how I expected. I expected that I'd pass it no problem. What actually happened was that I failed, the cardiologist stopped the test early and scheduled me for an angiogram the next day on the assumption that I had at least one blocked artery. He also gave me cholesterol and high blood pressure meds to start on right away.
This freaked me out. Because while I've always had low blood pressure, entirely normal cholesterol and am in pretty good shape, my mom's side of the family has made a habit of dying of massive heart attacks before 50, which is what I'm turning this year.
So I go for the angiogram. Which first entails sitting in the waiting room for four hours. (Fortunately, I'd brought the last Sharpe novel, which I'd been saving for the right occasion.) Then there's the test, which involves them slicing open an artery in my leg, putting a catheter through it to my heart, and injecting dye so they can x-ray the arteries.
The good news is there weren't any blocked arteries. Though the cardiologist had no good theories for why my heart freaked out during the stress test.
The bad news is I'm allergic to the dye. Which meant they then had to push benadryl into me through the IV and I spent most of yesterday looped.
Also, I've now had to take two extra days off work to let the artery heal. And I've spent most of the last day and a half feeling like I've been beaten up.
It seems entirely unfair that I will have lost three days to get a negative result. Though I would have lost a heck of a lot more if I'd had a positive one.
This did not go how I expected. I expected that I'd pass it no problem. What actually happened was that I failed, the cardiologist stopped the test early and scheduled me for an angiogram the next day on the assumption that I had at least one blocked artery. He also gave me cholesterol and high blood pressure meds to start on right away.
This freaked me out. Because while I've always had low blood pressure, entirely normal cholesterol and am in pretty good shape, my mom's side of the family has made a habit of dying of massive heart attacks before 50, which is what I'm turning this year.
So I go for the angiogram. Which first entails sitting in the waiting room for four hours. (Fortunately, I'd brought the last Sharpe novel, which I'd been saving for the right occasion.) Then there's the test, which involves them slicing open an artery in my leg, putting a catheter through it to my heart, and injecting dye so they can x-ray the arteries.
The good news is there weren't any blocked arteries. Though the cardiologist had no good theories for why my heart freaked out during the stress test.
The bad news is I'm allergic to the dye. Which meant they then had to push benadryl into me through the IV and I spent most of yesterday looped.
Also, I've now had to take two extra days off work to let the artery heal. And I've spent most of the last day and a half feeling like I've been beaten up.
It seems entirely unfair that I will have lost three days to get a negative result. Though I would have lost a heck of a lot more if I'd had a positive one.
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no subject
Date: 2015-03-05 12:24 pm (UTC)I'm so sorry you had to go through all this petal but I'm glad to hear about the negative result. ♥
I'm sure your doctor has already considered the more commonly associated things else he wouldn't have sent you for the stress test. On my mother's side the acid reflux has always heralded gall bladder problems and my MIL's family tend to have a narrow oesophagus which starts to give them problems in their 50s. They usually end up doing swallow tests and then having their oesophagus stretched.
no subject
Date: 2015-03-05 10:46 pm (UTC)We're waiting for the result of a swallow test. And I've just seen the specialist and asked for a gall bladder test, so they can rule that out. It looks like it'll be another month of waiting for results, but at least I'm not in imminent danger of a heart attack and the biopsy has shown no cancer, so yay! (I'm going to take what good news I can.)