So bone marrow biopsy is off somewhere getting scrutinized, yet here I am still at the hospital. I was finished at 1:30 and the echocardiogram wasn't scheduled until 2:45, They remembered me from last time and they are just a bunch of great health care professionals. They knew I had to hang around and they really wanted to just let me hang out in bed there, but there had been three people brought in by ambulance and they really did need my bed. One nurse took Lon aside and told him when 1:30 came to just take off. They couldn't release me without him, so I thought that sounded like a perfect sneaky dirty, but I really didn't need to be there.
They got me this nifty wheelchair. It reminds me of seating in fast food restaurants--designed to look good and comfy, but in reality uncomfortable and really designed to make you want to get out of there.
For the kidney biopsy I was fine beforehand, but got sick to my stomach after. This time I felt queasy before and great (stomach wise) after, so we went to the hospital cafeteria. It just sounds wrong, doesn't it. Lon got a hamburger and I had a couple bites and before we knew it, we were off to the echocardiogram.
One horrible thing (among many) about amyloidosis is that the amyloid protien can collect in just about every organ, including your heart. The walls of the heart thicken and stiffen up and there's really nothing short of a transplant that will fix it. The echocardiogram was super scary for just that reason. The doctor in Virginia did tell me that the results of two blood tests were as good of prognosis as any of the other tests, and those results did look encouraging, but still.... I don't know which is worse--waiting and not knowing or really knowing. This is really the stuff that nightmares are made of.
So the time of sort of truth had come. The technician was a cool guy from France. Of course they can't tell you a darn thing, but it didn't stop me from trying to shmooze him up to pry out some kind of hints about my heart function. Unfortunately, he was a professional and let me babble on.
Lon took these pictures of my heart. In some ways they are reminiscent of the Grinch's heart--remember when it grew? But in other ways it just doesn't show how much love it is capable of. It's odd to see something that has been working so hard 24/7 for the past 58 years, but really can't show that this is really what makes me and defines me. Pretty philosophical.
Echocardiograms are supposed to take 30 to 45 minutes, but he only took 15. Good news or bad?
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