So I went to see cardiologist Dr. Sherman Sorensen today. He wasn't in the office to talk to me, emergency, but his very capable technician was there to run all the tests and then I could schedule the follow up chat with Dr. Sorensen at a later time, if necessary.
First test was quite interesting. The put a little helmet with a few "probes" on my head, shot saline solution with thousands of tiny bubbles into a vein in my arm and watched to see how many of those bubbles made it through my heart and to the arteries in my head and how many of them dissipated before hitting my head. TONS of bubbles means there's a hole and several bubbles means no hole.
The technician said the results were negative for hole in my heart. In fact, he said, the results were SO negative that he almost had to question if the IV was working properly or not. He said you'll usually see several, but I had ONE.
Next test was an ultrasound of my heart. OMG! This was so cool! I got to watch the whole thing. (I've had a few different ultrasounds on my uterus and I've always watched and wondered how the hell the technician knew what they were looking at.) But with my heart - it was so clear and so obvious! I watched as my valves opened and closed. I watched my myocardium get fat and then skinny with each contraction and relaxation. I watched the atria contract and then the ventricles pump. I could see little black spots where the vena cavae entered my heart. And the cool thing was that as we were looking at my left atria I could see all these little white specks. I asked that those were and he said - those are the bubbles that are still in your system.
But nothing there to indicate a hole either.
Last test also involved the ultrasound and more bubbles. This time he shot thousands of bubbles into my heart again and with the ultrasound we watched as my right atria turned bright white from tthe thousands of bubbles and noticed that my left atria stayed black. No bubbles spilled from the right atria into the left atria - further proving that I have no hole between my right and left atria.
I have a perfectly normal and perfectly healthy heart.
So good news and bad news all at the same time. Great news that I don't need to worry about having a stroke any time in the near future. Great news that I am much less likely to have a stroke later on in life as well. Good news that I don't have to have surgery. Good news that I have a perfectly normal and perfectly healthy heart.
Bad news that we still don't know what is causing my migraines.
No comments:
Post a Comment