Tomorrow, part 1 of The Journey begins!

We leave tomorrow for our trip to Seattle. We figure that if we leave around midday we should arrive in Seattle around dusk providing the highways are clear, unobstructed and accident free.

We are staying overnight in one of the University of Washington Medical Center's Hospitality Houses, which is a beautiful old looking brick building located adjacent to the Hospital Complex, so that is perfect.

They are extending us a great rate and Danny will probably be putting in for a room there when I go in, if it all works out well. That is a big relief me too. However, I will have to climb a flight of stairs because they had no room on the 1st floor available. Luckily, the woman told Danny that it is only 7 steps and then a riser, before the second set of 7 steps, so I can stop halfway to regain myself if necessary.

We have the room for one night, and early Monday morning about 7:30, we'll be leaving to go check me in for my testing.

My first test of the day: The Pulmonary Perfusion Test also known as the Ventilation Perfusion Scan or VQ Scan, where radioactive isotopes are injected into my my veins or I will inhale them into my lungs and then images will be scanned of them.

After the Lung Perfusion test, I am off to the next one, the "full-on" pulmonary function test, in the glass booth, ugh, where they'll seal me in glass, pinch off my nostrils while having a mouthpiece in my mouth and start by having me blow my guts out, suck air in, blow some more, then do things like cut my air off completely while I am sucking air in, blast air directly into my lungs to completely fill them (a very weird thing to feel when you consider that we do not inhale completely filling our lungs when we normally breathe without any disease present). These tests usually cause my skin color to change and flush through the whole warm scale of the color palette almost completely over the threshold not stopping the purple range until it just meets blue.

I have never met a person that enjoys these tests. They hurt soul deep.

But recovery is speedy and complete, especially once O2 is applied, and that test takes only about an hour or so, and it will include a test for arterial blood gas. Sheesh...

~*~*~*~

After that, we get a lunch break but I have been advised not to eat too much because after lunch, I am off to the Exercise Bike Stress Test directly after eating.

This is the one test of which I am the most leery. I do not like to induce movement-related shortness of breath, and every bit of my subconscious being screams out to naturally avoid this, or I will succumb. I won't of course; and even if I did, I am in the right place to be succumbing, they can slap me onto a gurney and plug me into whatever they plug people into to revive them.

I have recently received some information regarding this test thanks to another friend, Karen who will be going through her lung perfusion test on Monday, only she'll be in Alpena, MI. She is also a hairdresser with a very, very similar situation as me, and she is also a likely candidate for LVRS. They do their screening a little differently, but the end result seems to be the same: Surgery, at one of the great University Centers positioned across the country for people like us. These Centers are specifically set up for Transplants and things like LVRS and related surgeries. Bless them!

OK, After the exercise bike test, it is off to a blood draw (pre-op?) and they will do the nicotine test.

Finally, at 2:30pm, we will meet with the surgeon and team and consult with them and the other people present, case mgr etc. I am hoping that this is where we will learn about the date of surgery.

After that, we get in the car and head directly for Weinerschnitzel, I-5 and our southerly route home.

Don't forget, I will be watching for the Albany off ramp, and the Calapooia Brewing Co. (Danny has the Mapquest already completed), and the empty "deposit" bottles will be in the car ready to exchange.

I can already envision myself in the front seat of the car, excitedly pointing the way, a chilidog half-hanging out of my mouth, Danny rolling his eyes back into his head and ready by then, to pinch my oxygen line shut, when I start saying something like "oh, you're missing the turnoff!"

Yup, I am definitely reward driven.

Until later, then....
Wish me luck on that darned bicycle test, so that I will fall right into the center of their required results needed.

Oh yes, one more thing, did I mention that I am not allowed to take any of my COPD and lung meds before I start my testing, so I am going at it a la naturelle.

Snack Me.

My test was today, Thursday Feb 16^th, 2012. This test is one of those long-named word diagnostics. I believe it was called a Myocardio Perfusion Test.

This was the dreaded Stress Test. Remember the one where I envisioned Regan flailing on the gurney, blood spraying everywhere?

Well it wasn’t like that at all.

I will admit to feeling bewildered for a little while. Especially when one considers that I was told that I had to fast: no caffeine, no nothing. All I could have was little sips of water. This alone is hard to bear for a person who regularly drinks double shots of espresso. Sigh.

But I made it. I was doing well until I checked in and was sent to the 3rd floor. As I was about to walk onto the elevator I heard my name called and I turned and there was my Golden Heart#1 (the one we'll call Susan, waving to me and wishing me well in my test! Out of all the people in the hospital, here she was, waving at me! Wow, and I waved back).

Of course, I had been sent to the wrong department. Then I was sent back to the woman that misguided me, and she redirected me. When I got to the correct department, they asked for my paperwork, which of course, I had none, since I was just sent there. So again, I was returned to the front desk a third time, and this time she sent me around the corner to the “booth.”

These are the booths that have a chair and a counter and on the opposite side of the counter sits a person at a screen with a key board, and stacks of papers and pens on chains, not the big flowers taped on their pens like at the front desk. You know you are entering into Accounting Zone, and you sit down and prepare to sign everything away, because even if your insurance balks at the last minute (you won’t know this for at least 5-6 mo. when the decision making actually takes place); you still need the procedure done today so it is very easy to sign everything now.

After signing 7 or 8 times I was asked to verify my birthdate, and then to extend my right arm outward and a plastic bracelet was snapped on and the tag cut off. I now belonged to the hospital, and was being directed back to the front desk for a fourth time.

The woman told me to go into a different room to watch a video about the procedure that was going to be performed on me. At this point I need to tell you, that it was only the day before, that I had found out that the test would take 3-4 hr to complete, so finding out about the video quickly became a new sources of bewilderment for me. Being sent in to watch a video of the procedure that was going to take place quickly became my 2nd source of bewilderment. A video? In my mind anything that takes a video to prepare a person, can’t be small. All this time I had thought that my stress test would be one of those treadmills tests that last about 45 min from going in to coming back out…..Nope, not today.

As the video started, my vision of Regan slowly entered my mind when the video talked about a machine hugging my body and that I wasn’t allowed to move at all for 15 min or so…. And these people would start shooting hypodermic needles into my IV… oh man… yikes….

I have to say that I am very lucky. I have discovered another Golden Heart in the Gym. We’ll call him John. John also works up in the Cardio diagnostic center that was conducting my test today, and he is the one that originally enlightened me yesterday as to the proceedings of my test and the duration of time it would last. John is familiar with the type of test that what was being called for. He discussed it with me and made it easier for me to understand the process before I found out this morning. So my only real surprise was the video, of course it had the visuals, and had I not been pre informed, I might have freaked out even more once I realized that I had to watch a video of the whole thing in the first place.

Once I got back in there, they gave me a gown with no discernable garment shape which had snaps all over it and I finally figured out the the snaps constituted the shoulders of the gown and was able to make clothing out of it.

Everyone was very nice, polite and friendly. I mean they had better be, I was in Nuclear medicine!

First, they IV’ed me and taped a Y shape port into the affixed IV line now taped to me and I think he injected something nuclear into me….. and once I was on hospital O2 (directly from the wall, something new for me), they snacked me. I was given cheese and crackers and cranberry juice, to get my digestion working to help move the chemicals through my system. It was explained that the food would get my organs working and they would be farther away from the heart and not impede the images, or something like that. OK.. Then I waited about 20-30 min for this to take place.

I watched some scenic flip book travelog on TV, about Oregon like the shows that air on Easter… Then all of a sudden John showed up!

We talked for a bit and he handed me a remote control for the TV. He let me know that he had talked to my tech and that they had tried to inform my Dr’s in WA, that my high speed pulse may not need the drug push to elevate me, but it was to no avail. My surgeons in WA have a protocol to follow, so I was good with that. What it meant was that I would not need to walk on a treadmill to elevate my pulse, and that they’d inject me to do it.

So John made sure I was comfortable and he went on with his daily work. It felt really nice to know that there are people that I see down on the first floor in the Gym that actually go out of their way to stop in when one of their charges is up in the hospital having testing. Who does that? My Golden Hearts do!

So I watched Star Trek New Generation on TV in the waiting room.

My tech came and retrieved me from TV and I was taken into the testing room for images of my heart. Things were taped to my body (they look amazingly like the snaps on the shoulders of my gown), and then I was laid back on the table, and the big machine was moved up over me. It lasted a total of about 7 min of exposures. No problem, I almost dozed off. Then I was told that this part had now finished and I was wrapped in hot blankets and taken back out into the lobby for more TV.

By the way, I happened to have been the only person there today, so the remote was mine, all mine.
I waited another ½ hr or so, before they came out and retrieved me again. This was the big one, where they would be injecting me with things that would speed my heart up.

This part of the test is where two techs work as a tag team, one on a screen the other running the test. Together they work in tandem, and they have to be on the ball for this. Watching and timing everything perfectly or it doesn’t count. And believe me, when it involves a persons heart beat you really don’t want it to “not count.” These techs were savvy and they were both very nice women and we all got along quite well. There was laughter and bright attitudes which I found very helpful.

I’ll tell you this about the drug they used, the techs said it was referred to “Exercise in a bottle”……. And I say “Boy Howdy, isn’t that the truth!”

They gave me one drug that pushed my heart beat up to the speed they needed and when it was obtained they then injected something else (don’t ask me). After a prescribed time it was over….But during that time, I was instructed to inform them every single feeling I had especially chest pain, tightness, arm pain, jaw pain (all those scary symptoms they advertise on TV) plus anything else I felt during this time…

Well, I feel everything..so I wonder just how much they really wanted… and I let them know when it felt like I could feel all the nerves in my face wake up and wiggle. And when my scalp tickled I told them too. But I had none of those dreaded symptoms so that was good. It was quite strange to feel my heart beat inside my chest without my having done it with my own movement on a treadmill though.

Since I do run at a fast heartbeat this test was quite easy for me and I was up at the required heartbeat very quickly with no need for the atropine that is sometimes used to boost the heart beat speed up. I am glad for that. I also didn’t need a nebulizer treatment that many do need since some of the drugs interfere with breathing. I sailed through it. My O2 saturation stayed up the whole time!

After my heartbeat race, I waited in the room for my heart to go back to normal, and then once again I was taken back to the waiting room, but not before we discussed websites, blogs (I told them about this blog) and jewelry making. When they returned me to the waiting room they told me that this time I could have coffee!

YAY!

So I was ‘snacked’ once again, in addition to heaped with wonderfully heated blankets. This time on TV, I noticed that “The Talk” was on and that told me that one o‘clock had been reached. I saw no clocks anywhere on the walls though I am sure that every screen had the time even if it was 24hr time or gmt.

Another half hour or so and I was retrieved a third time. We went back to the first room of image- taking and repeated the process so they could see how my heart operated after being stressed.

This time I laid down, the same as earlier, but for only half the time and then the bed was lifted and I completed the time in a sitting position, and then it was all done.

It did take quite a while, but none of it was as bad as I had envisioned.
It was just . plain . weird.

I walked out to my car, my day now completed and the only residual effect was that my arm vein hurt a bit, and I had a slight headache, but that’s nothing.

I came home, took some Advil, rested for a moment, and then I called Seattle to inform the case manager that the test had now been completed, and went back to my life….

I had fantastic people working in me all day long, And they really helped me get through a test that may have been a bit frightening and I have my now 3rd Golden Heart, John to thank for giving me the “head’s up,” before I found out the hard way.

And finally, I will always have a soft spot in my heart for Tillamook Cheddar Cheese, Premium Saltines and Cranberry juice! A wonderful way to “Snack Me.”

I really don't like fasting.