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Saturday, January 17, 2009

Someone's stepping on the hose

Okay. For all you mom's out there. I am back in room 705, at Swedish. I got in touch with my Onc and he had me check myself into the ER. He said that the cardiologist and the on-call Onc would meet me here. One of the messages of this post is that miscommunication happens, and you must be on your tippee toes to be your own advocate, constantly. Because ER doc wanted to give me, himself, alone the diuretic..Which 4 doc's have been debating for an entire week. The reason being is this..Hold on it gets deep...
Okay. Here's the deal. There are two water problems in my body right now and they are related. One being that my whole body is swollen with fluid. The way a body typically gets rid of this fluid is that it gets into your blood vessels and gets pumped through, by your heart, and eventually your kidneys pee it out. Here comes the second water problem. Which is, there is a pocket of water around my hear that is squeezing it. Which makes my heart beat as fast as if I was running. Which is insane. So..its working hard enough doing its thing, (very healthfully i will add) but it can't handle anything more. Like getting rid of my the water in my body. Which has caused a literal backup in my body. Its a vicious cycle.
So the problem with diuretics is two things. THe first thing is that it works on the first fluid problem, the fluid in my legs and everywhere else. Not the fluid around my heart and lungs, which by the way is worse now than last week, says the x-rays and another eccho tonight. The second problem with diuretics is that it lowers the amount of water in my vessels which means that squeezing around my heart would be allowed to squeeze my heart even more. Which would cause low blood pressure. And this would be dangerous.
So...they have now decided to do the heart tap, so that hopefully the vicious back-up problem can be fixed. I of coarse have feelings about this. But that is tomorrow or the next day.

My friend Tamara came and met me at the ER because I was very scared and sad and scared some more. I will write more later. I don't know how this is all going to work out. I am sure I won't die from getting my heart punctured. But just in case, I want to let those of you that know me, know that I love you all. And I have lived a wonder-filled life. And I do not regret anything. I have LIVED! I am just saying this, not to be melodramatic, but because often people hide and don't share how they really feel. So there you go!

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I am going through my blog, as I write my book years later. February 1, 2012 to be exact. This is the one post that I must change..

Now, I no longer am protecting D. To go back to the phone call my Doc and I had. The one he told me to go to the ER. Well, I was in such debilitating pain, that that night I had a CT scan because they were all afraid I was having a heart attack. I thought I was as well. That is how badly I hurt. Do you know what D said when I said, We have to go to the ER? Sorry, I can't go. I need a break. I am not going to cancel my dinner plans with my friend and we are going to see a show. I can come see you tomorrow. Fuck him. I was so incredibly hurt by this. I was his wife at this point. But a wife that was starting to see the man I had chosen for myself. I was the type of woman that did everything around the house, even during treatment. I still tried grocery shopping, even if I had to ask someone at the grocery to push my cart through the isles. This sucked, and hurt, and tore a huge irreparable whole in my heart allowing me to see that the marriage I'd signed up for, was always, going to be about him.

2 comments:

tamara said...

Hello all!
Tamara here. Just posting this comment so you know...I left the hospital at mindnight and Heather was doing fine. She was getting her port-o-cath thingy accessed because they'll need to get blood at 4am, so doing the cath thing now is better. She and I dined on some marvelous hospital food (BLEAH) just in time to make the no-food-after-midnight deadline. The cardiologist is due to show up and talk to Heather at 7am. So she'll know more after that.
She looks great and we had some good giggles and chats. Also, her blood counts are way up (that's good news, btw) and so that is exciting...it's part of the recovery from the chemo.
Also we met another marvelous onc...I don't remember her name. She came by and explained all the stuff going on with Heather's bod, and made heather feel better about going in tonite. I personally am thrilled she went in, because it means she HAS to take it easy and do nothing, which is good for her heart right now. But of course it's no fun at all to be there. The ER is full of sick people and it's very anonymous and scary and bare. It feels a lot better now that she is in her own room with very attentive people taking care of her. Of course, everyone up there on the 7th floor remembered her from last week, and I'm sure none of you will be surprised that she has all these new friends. :)
She feels very supported by all the wonderful friends who called and emailed and left messages. I know myself that I was horrified to see her last post and glad I could go in to be with her. And getting all those calls and having everyone reach out was amazing, especially for someone like her (like us all, really) who doesn't like to ask for things.
So now she's looking forward to the possibility that the tap to get the water out from her pericardial sac will help...my gut says that it will (though I'm no doctor, of course...). It just seems like getting her system 'unclogged' will at least allow things to get back into balance and the water to drain from her system.
So, she looks good and she's being very cared for. Keep calling and emailing her. I can see each email and call bolstering her up every time one comes in.
That being said, she forgot to bring her computer and phone chargers to the hospital (d'oh!) so don't worry too much if you don't get through.

apriljahns said...

Geez, Heather! I wish I could come visit you. Better yet, I wish I could make you better. Love you.