My father-in-law just left, having explained a great deal of the info thrown at us over the last few days in terms of metabolism and body systems. He's an endocrinologist, and the manner in which he explains things often help clarify for me because I'm a mechanic more than a theorist: his answers can kind of be seen in the 'body as car' template that makes a lot of sense to me.
Today was, to some extent, yesterday again, only more so.
I tried to stay in a slow state and enjoy, if not sleep, then marked inactivity as late as I could, which means lying flat till 8 o'clock or later.
Turns out that somewhere in the bowels of the hospital, some clerical person or machine still thought I was going to get shocked.
CLEAR!
And if yer gonna get shocked, no food for you.
So breakfast never came.
Just a guy with a wheelchair did.
The procedures had been swizzled, but I discovered at 8:57 that I was slated for a nice nine o'clock echo.
Happy to have the echo as early as possible, but had been basically unconscious ten minutes earlier. N was pretty much still out, though rousing with impressive alacrity.
I was already a little faint with hunger. And being a day after I actually fainted, I got a little worried.
So we're scrambling around our little curtained kingdom, climbing over stuff. N gets a Boost calorie drink out of the fridge for me. The poor transport guy-whose job is just to haul me to the 4th floor--is just left twiddling his thumbs while N, the nurse, and I all cooperate on opening the Boost bottle.
I get the pseudo-chocolate chugged, stand upright without moving for a ten-count to make sure I don't drop like Roberto Duran at Sugar Ray Leornard's feet (de cramps, de cramps!), and I'm off.
Transport delivers me to a wall near a door on Four, and there I sit. For some reason I find this hilarious. Maybe it is the Boost.
Then an Echo tech brings me into the room and I get a very thorough set of heart measurements on a very high tech sonogram machine. There's Doppler pictures of my blood flow in different directions, there're freeze-frame audio slates of each heartbeat. The tech is drawing lines and shapes around certain peaks and valleys. It's a rollicking good time, though the gel is very chilly. We can send people to the moon and we can live eight years under a president who couldn't find his ass with a map and a head start, and yet we can't warm the gel? C'mon, America, let's do better.
I watch all the tests, as if I have a rat's ass of an idea what any of it means, and I manage to quell the tension. Every passing slur and bleep, peak and la-lump, makes me feel like it is all wrong. Heart irretrievably ruined, a shattered beer bottle of a vessel.
Calm down, drama queen. When I concentrate I can clearly hear and see the classic four-part rhythm that was so absent during my 4am brush with idiocy.
And it works, a little. I talk myself out of the stupidness, out of the terror. It works, a little. This is a good thing.
The tech has a student sitting in, and I am asked, after the official test, if I mind letting her do some Echoing for her med school classes.
My heart is just as much an actor as the rest of me, and is overjoyed to be asked. Does this ventricle make me look fat?
She's from New Hampshire. She goes to NYU. When I say "Go Violets!" there's a pause in the room as four eyes register...nothing.
She knew that was the NYU mascot. She just didn't care. And the tech, well, I might as well have asked her about toe-cheese.
Other than that it goes well and I am back on the leukemia ward within the hour.
And shockingly soon thereafter a member of the cardio team comes by to talk to us and explain his version of what has been building in the opinions around us for a day or so: it is bad that I went A-fib, but it happens, and while it might happen again while I am getting poisoned, this episode seems to have passed and we'll be careful but move forward.
Soon thereafter the Echo is in hand, and it seems all good. The left Atrium is slightly dilated; that's where the A-fib happens. But the heart is strong and not fluid-wrapped or infected or anything bad at all. The cardio guy returns with his honcho, and the honcho in even and deliberate terms says pretty much the same thing--keep an eye out, nothing's certain while your battling cancer and on drugs meant to harm you, but as far as things stand now, have a nice day.
And they are gone. And we are fine with that. It is the most pleasant of dismissals from a department, and we are happy to be off their radar.
All schedules have been thrown by the weekend of the heart, but today rolls by aided by two units of blood to prop my hemoglobin and some amazing steak kebab N and my aforementioned Dr-in-law brought, which disappeared like...well...um...like steak, I guess.
Tomorrow will hopefully have explanations and schedules and a lot more forward-thinking, but I am satisfied that today has ended without any new wrinkles, and with a few old ones pressed out.
