5 October 2023
About three this morning I realized I was getting chilled. I put the down comforter on the bed and that helped. When I did get out of bed at 6, I found I was running a moderate temperature of 100°F. I texted Dr. Velez and asked if he wanted me to still go in for the echocardiogram scheduled at 9 am. I’m to notify him if it ever climbs to 100.4°F. That’s a sure sign of infection for chemo patients. He said yes, go in and get it done. As a precaution, I took a Covid test and it came back negative.
Don’t get on I-95 at 8:05 am on a weekday. It was stop and go and I made it with about 5 minutes to spare to Holy Cross. The echocardiogram people are apparently backed up and Dr. Velez scheduled me for Nuclear Medicine. Finally, around 9:35 am I was taken back and met Felipe. He needed to establish an IV and draw blood. He had a real hard time finding a vein in my hand. Eventually, he was able to draw enough for the test.
Felipe wanted to gossip and when I mentioned I had fired one hematologist/oncologist, he wanted to know who. I told him and he said he had heard, like I told him, that he wasn’t a great communicator. When he asked who I had now, and said Dr. Velez, he said everyone speaks very highly of him. That’s pretty much the response I get from everyone who wants to talk about doctors.
They take my blood and load the surface of the red blood cells with the radioactive isotope Technetium-99. It is a short lived isotope so they use it as a tracer as blood is pumped through the heart. It took about 25 minutes for them to load my red blood cells with enough T-99.
Since the IV would not accept a flush, Danielle came in and put an IV in my arm around the area of my elbow. Everyone has trouble putting an IV in the right arm because they apparently moved some stuff around during the biceps tear surgery several years ago. She made it seem easy.
I had to wait 10-15 minutes for the tracer to circulate in my blood enough to be registered in the heart and then Danielle took me back to photograph my heart with three different angles/images, each lasting 10 minutes. It’s difficult lying there with your arms over your head for 3 ten minute photographs. Danielle started the process but Travis finished it up with me.
I asked Travis to send a copy to my cardiologist who I see next week and, of course, to Dr. Velez.
I got home around noon after a stop at McDonalds and immediately went back to bed and crashed for a couple of hours. Joel called around 2 pm and said he was outside my door with a “gift.” Everyone is telling him manuka honey is supposed to be good for diarrhea so he brought me a jar.
I’ll try it but to be honest, diarrhea isn’t a problem at the moment. Constipation is the problem of the day. I’m not sure which is worse. Constipation makes you feel like you constantly need to void and never quite get there. I did have to go before the imaging and again once I got home and again this afternoon. It’s very solid stool. Of course, diarrhea makes you very weak and it put me in the hospital one time. I think I’ll cut back on the anti-diarrhea medicine to one tab every 4 hours – at least for a little while.
In any case, the test results came back. My left ventricle, the one the think is most important to photograph, registered at 62% efficiency. Anything in the 50-75% range is considered normal so my heart hasn’t been damaged by Herceptin – yet. I have a whole year of the stuff to do, every three weeks.
I just checked my temperature again and it’s at 98.6°F now. I don’t particularly feel any better but at least I’m not feverish. Tomorrow, I have hydration therapy and I can tell I’ll need it. Looks like day 3 and 4 after the chemo is my roughest time. I’ll be curious to see what my temp is tomorrow morning. For some reason, they have me scheduled for 2 pm instead of 1:30. Maybe they have a staff meeting to attend.
Stay tuned!