Kickstart my Heart

The last hour of wearing my 48 hour heart holter monitor seemed like the longest hour of my life. Funny how the memory of pain and discomfort fades because I'm pretty sure having that giant needle stabbed into my heart last year was worse… but none the less, I couldn’t claw those sticky jumper cables off my chest fast enough. It felt like I had been wearing a tight corset for two days and I just needed to bust out (literally!)

I have continued to have a racing/ random jumpy heart since this whole thing started so I went back to my doctors for an x-ray and then another echocardiogram yesterday. My original echocardiogram showed that the current looping round one side of my heart was a bit “jiggly” as the report put it. Not that I knew until I went back complaining of it yet again.

The original follow-up I received from my hematologist was that my heart was fine. Lesson: Do not get your hematologist to interpret a cardiac report, get a cardiologist. So this time I have scheduled an apt with the cardiologist to discuss the follow-up report. Hopefully we will get to the bottom of this crazy heart thing.

It makes me feel very vulnerable to have my heart acting wonky all the time, more so than having cancer. I never feel like I could drop dead with cancer, but I sure feel that way about my heart. It mostly bothers me when I'm sleeping because it’s always racing, I never feel at rest. It reminds me of when I was a kid and we would be camping in some spooky woods and I couldn’t get to sleep because I was terrified by all the night noises and that there was some dude with an axe right out side the tent.
Ya like that, it feels like I'm scared all the time and my heart is racing except the only scary thing in my bedroom at night is likely me – bed-head, ugly pj’s, morning breathe = racing heart?

I also get what I can only describe as a surge or a whooshing feeling in my heart randomly. Anyone who has ever had a picc or port might understand this, it feels like when the nurse would flush your line with saline really fast and you could feel the whoosh of fluid into your heart. Except there’s no line now, so where is the feeling coming from?

I also have an overall heaviness in my heart that is hard to tell if it’s my heart or lungs. When I exercise I feel I reach an exertion limit where I know my heart and lungs just can’t do anymore no matter what. Sometimes if I talk too long or get laughing to hard I start to cough, and other times I just have a general ache and prickly stabs from the top of my heart (where the cancer is left) that bother me. But these seem mild now compared to the discomfort of the holter!

PET scans... good times, good times...

I did not know how long it would take to get a CT/PET scan until I arrived for the appointment early in the morning. I’m a “must eat as soon as I roll outta bed” kinda person, and having gotten up at 7am without breakfast or coffee (have to fast for scan) and drove 2 hours (again with out coffee) to be told at 10am that the scan process will take 3 hours (without coffee)… well she’s lucky I didn’t eat my Wheaties after all!

The scan it’s self is only about an hour, but you have to have a die injected beforehand and then percolate for an hour. Ahh injections here we go again! You know the story, my veins are toast and it’s very hard to get a line in or out. After the usual 3 tries in different locations the tech got into my hand, the problem with that was I started to faint after the 2nd try and more people had to be called in to deal with me and my shenanigans while the first guy kept poking around.

It’s really so maddening! I am not afraid of needles or blood and I am indifferent to these pains, but the moment it looks like the process is not working (usually the 2nd,3rd or 4th poke) I start to faint. My nurses, mother and therapist all say it’s a stress response but I don’t feel stressed, just embarrassed that I can’t control myself. (The lack of food probably didn’t help.)

Oh it just flabbergasts me! I am not a lily of girl, I can do 16 rounds of chemo, watch the doctor jab a 6” needle in my heart to drain it… hell I once took a punch in the jaw in grade 9 from a girl built like a quarter back; I was famous that week! (I didn’t dare hit her back, but I didn’t fall down either; and I kept her boyfriend… I digress…) I am a tough bitch… who faints allot! (As soon as I wake up there’ll be hell to pay!)

Anyways the scan was uneventful; the results are in a few days.
Tamara -1 vs. Cancer -0