Because of last week’s bad biopsy results, I had to make another appearance at Northwestern Hospital for ANOTHER biospy.  I also scheduled a few other appointments that I was expected to get taken care of.

6:00 – My good friend, Dave Westergaard came into the room that he had so graciously allowed me to sleep in for the night.  He lives in Highland Park, IL which was only a 20 minute drive to the hospital!  Usually, I have to rely on my family in Rockford to drive me.  But, since it’s a good 1.5 or 2 hour drive, we have to get up extra early in order to get to the cath lab between 6:30 and 7:00am.

7:03am – Dave let me off at the curb on 201 Huron Street at the door that I usually go through, and I dutifully went straight up to the 8th floor.  The check-in nurse, whose desk is so strategically placed right next to the elevator bank so that you can’t avoid you, recognized me immediately!  A very, very cheery woman, the first thing she said to me was, “Where’s your mom?”  (My mom is pretty popular around that place too.)

I had a brand new nurse assigned to me this time, Denise.  She was very, very friendly, but didn’t realize how familiar I was the place, the people, and the procedures.  (I even informed her that she forgot to ask me when the last time I ate was!)

I brought my laptop with me, but just felt so, so drained that I just didn’t have the energy to break it out.  The demands that other people have been placing on me have just been enormous!  It seems as though everywhere I turn, someone is trying to insert a spigot into any available spot on my body.  It’s much like the nurses who have had to scour my arms to find a spot on a vein that fights the needle.  I had to force myself to relax, and to stop thinking/worrying about the stressors that constantly plague me.  I’ve been finding that my life is nothing but a series of crises, one, two, or three at a time connected by life-squeezing wormholes.

So, I just slept until it was time for the biopsy. 

9:30 – Biopsy.  I was escorted into the sub-zero temperature cath lab, stepped right up onto the super skinny table, stripped naked by 2 gorgeous nurses and then sedated.  The next thing I knew, I was back in my parking spot in the holding area. 

12:55 – I had to race over to the 626 building to meet with Dr. Stoser from the infectious disease department.  Evidently, my donor had been exposed to a dangerous virus called CMV, but I had not.   Consequently, I have been taking an anti-viral medicine called Valcyte (which costs nearly $3000 per bottle!).  They would like me to discontinue me from it, but I have to very closely monitor my health and get lab work done every two weeks.

2:00pm – I had to go over to the Galter pavilion in order to have a procedure done that I never had done before.  It was called a “DEXA Scan” — the purpose of which was to measure my bone density.  (Prednisone, one of the powerful steriods I’m on, has a lot of beneficial effects, but also, a lot of negative ones.  Although it’s helping to prevent mst y heart from being rejected, it also likes to erode my bones.)

Luckily, I was able to con my father to drive in to the city to pick me up.  He left at 2:30 and didn’t get there until 5:30.  I just sat in Au Bon Pain restaurant on the second floor and then in the lobby getting some work done.

My parents and I had to wake up very early this morning in order to make it to my scheduled heart biopsy at Northwestern hospital in downtown Chicago.

Fortunately, I was still very tired and was able to sleep most of the way to the hospital.  My dad, who would rather whittle away minutes from his ultimate Time of Death by taking all of the side roads into Chicago rather than paying a couple bucks by taking the tollway, was able to get us to the front door of the Feinberg Pavillion shortly after 7:00 am. 

My mom and I jumped on the elevator to the eighth floor where I was greeted by name by the secretary there and given my typical blue placard with the letters, “H1” on it.  Holding room 1 was my typical spot during these outpatient procedures. 

I was met with some new nurses this time.  One was a really short, old
Chinese woman, extremely pleasant and nice, (nevertheless, I’m sure she’d be a shoe in at a casting call for a rice field worker).   She had the hardest time with my veins, fumbling around with needles in my left arm, while I just lay there gritting my teeth, grabbing the bedsheets, and trying not to squirm.  After what felt like an eternity, she asked, “Does it hurt?”  (For the life of me, I still can’t figure out what clued her in.)  “Very much, so, YES!!”  — She graciously apologized and said she would let me rest and let someone else give it a try.  It was obvious that today was just not her day when she just stood there for several minutes scratching her head in wonderment while trying to shove a thermometer down my throat.  It was obvious she was not getting the reading she wanted, and then I snickered and just waited for her to pull the thing back out before telling her, “You just put an ice cube in my mouth and then stuck the thermometer there 2 seconds later.”   She laughed embarrassingly as she realized why my temperature was only 95 degrees.

The  nurses from the lab came in and I could tell they were in a rush.  After getting myself settled on the skinny, cold operating table, they were able to get an IV fairly easily into my right arm, and get a more accurate temperature reading.

Per my request at every one of these procedures, I was sedated throughout the whole thing.

After it was all over, Susan Tafini, (my new nurse practitioner), came into my curtain cubicle and started asking me about my meds and such.  She said that I needed to lay off some of the steroids since my white blood cell count was TOO low, meaning, I’m very susceptible to infection.  I also had a high percentage of potassium (where the heck I could be getting too much potassium is beyond me, — OOOH Shoot!  My banana just broke off onto my keyboard, brb.)

My echocardiogram, for some reason, occurred much later than usual.  At 11:30, the guy peeked in and said he’d be back in half an hour to take me.  Starving, I instantly called my mom and asked her to go down to the cafeteria to get me something hot to eat.  (It was either that or have one of the dull sandwich’s the hospital serves.)   My wonderful, dutiful mother delivered the perfect little lunch to tied me over for a couple hours. 

The echo guy told me that my heart was actually pumping better than it should (the ejection fraction rate was about 70%), which meant that I was basically dehydrated. As he put it, “My heart was thirsty.”

I could tell it was finally October.  The weather was cold, wet, and dreary — I loved it!

Thank God for another day on my second lease on life!