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UPDATED Results

I got the results of my cardiac stress test today. They were abnormal. I don’t know yet what this means for my transplant.

Updated: Ok, that was rather cryptic. Sorry about that, it’s just that the test threw me for a loop since I had no idea I had any heart issues.

What they found was of middling concern, not normal but not pacemaker material. Specifically, dilation of the left ventricle with a LVEF of 45% and a small fixed defect in the mid-anterior myocardial wall. If you know what that means, well good for you. I haven’t heard from anyone about what they might want to do next.

My next test is tomorrow: pulmonary function.

Tags: transplant
Posted by mark beadles in Uncategorized | No Comments »

i’m radioactive

I underwent another one of the interminable tests required for my transplant yesterday. It was a cardiac stress test. I don’t have any history of heart problems, but since I’ll be undergoing major surgery and I’ve been on heavy duty meds for many years, the surgeon thought it wise. I figured, since I’ve been a hiker for a while now, if I had any heart issues I’d know it by now…

Anyway, the test was strange since it was in three parts, and I got to go home in between the parts. First, they injected me with a RADIOACTIVE!!1!!e1ev3nty!! isotope (Tc99m). Then they told me to go home for an hour and eat and drink. I came back and they put me in a gamma camera and took pictures of my innards for 20 minutes. Then they told to me to go home for an hour and eat and drink. I came back again and they put me on a treadmill and injected me with a heart stimulant. They took my BP and EKG while I was on the treadmill. The heart stimulant supposedly can cause all kinds of crazy symptoms such as impending doom, dizziness, and chest tightness. But the only symptom I has was that my feet suddenly felt like I was wearing boots.  Weird.

After that, they stuck me back in the gamma camera for another 20 minutes.  They confirmed that the images were clear and sent me on my way.

As for the results, I have no worries, but I’ll hear the official word later this week I imagine.

In the meantime I am full of radioactivity.  They gave me a slip of paper to show Homeland Security in case I set off a detector. Seriously.

later.

Tags: transplant
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updatery

Here’s an update on the latest milestone in the transplant saga: a major step forward!

On Thursday, Shark and I (accompanied by the lovely Monica) had an all-day appointment at the Ohio State University transplant clinic. In addition to fun videos explaining the joy of live organ donation, we met with a number of folks and got some tests/exams done. We also got the information on our upcoming surgery…

The kind of surgery we’re going to have is a living donor laparascopic kidney transplant. It’s amazing. They make a couple small (2-3 inches) incisions in the donor and use a laparascopic camera and tools to remove the kidney. It’s mininally invasive, leaves hardly any scars, and has a very quick recovery time. The donor surgery is about 3 hours. After removing the kidney from the donor, they’ll drop it into me. My incision will be larger and my surgey more invasive, but even so my half of the surgery will only be 3 hours as well. (My first transplant surgery was about 8 hours). The donor’s hospital stay is only 2-3 days, and the recipient’s about a week.

Shark and I met together with our transplant surgeon. The surgeon is part of a 2-man team specializing in laparascopic living donations. One of the team does the donor, and his partner does the recipient. The surgeon said he has personally performed over 1,000 laparascopic living donations, and 4,000 regular kidney transplants. For him this is absolutely routine.

The transplant surgeon examined us (amazingly briefly) and wrote down in my charts that I was an “excellent candidate for surgery”. Woo hoo!

We also met with the social worker, the nurse, and got our bloods drawn. shark also met with the nephrologist (kidney medical specialist) and had an EKG and X-ray.

They (both the surgeon and the social worker) asked us about scheduling. It was a little surreal…

OSU: “When were you thinking you’d like to have the surgery?”
Me: “Tomorrow. Seriously.”
OSU: “Are there any dates that wouldn’t be good for you? Thanksgiving? Christmas?”
Me: “Bring it on. Surgery, please. Any day, any time.”

I can’t imagine answering “well, maybe we should wait until after the holidays”…

There are a couple more things to do before the surgery is finally scheduled. I need to have a pulmonary function test and a cardiac stress test, and Shark needs to talk to the transplant shrink since he wasn’t able to talk to her on Thursday. They make sure everyone involved in the tranplant sees a shrink. Damn good idea.

Once those tests are all done, they’ll schedule it.

Yay!

Tags: transplant
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