Heart Check

Having a new doctor walk into the room and say to you, “You’re a very interesting case!” is getting a little old.

I mean, ok. It’s still a little amusing but I’d much rather be boring. I can’t wait to be boring. Though, at this point, I guess I’ll never be boring. RIP boring.

Anyway, the new doc who said that to me was my cardio-oncologist. Yes, a new team member and not particularly someone I wanted to recruit but I’m glad to have her on board. We’ll call her Dr. B.

My colorectal oncologist, Dr. Cannon, set me up with an appointment to meet with Dr. B because of the bad reaction to chemo I had a few weeks ago. The symptoms I was experiencing that warranted bringing on this specialist were: chest pressure, shortness of breath, and extreme fatigue. The ER ruled out a heart attack but Dr. Cannon wanted further investigation.

And let me tell you, Dr. B is another total rockstar. I love her. And I would love to not see her again. But, I will have to.

She met with me for about 45 minutes and gave me an incredible education on the heart—panic attacks versus what we think I had, heart attacks versus what we think I had, and what exactly she was looking for on the CT they did in the ER—which I got to see, as she walked me through it.

What she told me was, “You didn’t have a heart attack, but you kind of had a heart attack.”

Cool.

What she thinks I had is a coronary vasospasm—a sudden, usually temporary tightening of the arteries that supply blood to the heart, reducing blood flow and oxygen. It’s an uncommon side effect of 5-FU, the chemotherapy drug I was on.

I’d taken the drug for six rounds before and was fine. Well, not fine but not this bad. And, if you’ve had a coronary vasospasm with 5-FU there is a high likelihood it will happen again.

There’s no way to test for it ahead of time. She’s encouraged me to “keep walking and weight lifting” so two checks on that one. Those will serve both as the test (call her if I feel anything unusual) and maintenance for continued heart health.

The plan—should I need to continue chemo—is for me to take two drugs the first four days of the chemo cycle. These drugs help open the blood vessels of the heart. I’ll also be given nitroglycerin for breakthrough pain. I can take up to three in a row. If it doesn’t work after that, I call 911 and get myself to the ER stat.

So.

There’s a plan.
We like plans.

Also.

Um.
This is my heart we’re talking about.

And I’m not a big fan of my heart being messed with.

Dr. B’s notes, along with all the other tests I’ve done since the ER incident, will be read by Dr. Cannon. We meet on Thursday at which point he’ll recommend a path forward. I’ll ask (again) for all the stats we know of and we’ll go from there.

Oh, and Dr. B does want to check my cholesterol. It was a little high a couple years ago. (Runs in the family.) She asked me what my diet is. I said, “Ma’am. It’s incredibly healthy. The only thing that should worry you is that I eat french fries sometimes.”

What worries me is Tamoxifen, the endocrine therapy I have to go on for the breast cancer. Among its many charming side effects: it can raise your cholesterol.

The gifts keep coming.

 

Blood Check

Before any of that, Dr. Cannon had me do a blood culture to see if I had an infection in my blood. I did not/do not have an infection in my blood. And I do not have sepsis. Big win. We’ll take ’em where we can get ‘em.

But let me tell you—they took a LOT of blood for this one. Way more than the little vials. And they took it from both arms, which I found to be particularly rude to someone who really doesn’t like or do well with needles.

Though, I think that might be an old story now.

I used to need the lay-down chair. Ocean Spray Cran-Apple. Five or ten minutes afterward before I could get up and go anywhere.

This time I sat in the sit-up chair, had blood drawn from both arms for a decent amount of time, got wrapped up with gauze and that sticky gauze tape, hopped up, and went along my way—my arms looking like they belonged to a tennis player from the 1980s.

Not the kind of personal growth I would have chosen.

But here we are.

I’ll take this win too.

 

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To read more diagnosis and treatment updates, visit the archive here.

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