Angie & Jim

Stressful Testsby Angie

Well, folks, it’s mostly good news today.  I braved commuter traffic to reach Stanford at 9am for an echo, a stress test, and a clinic appointment with Dr. Murphy.  The echo went fine.  My function is down a little – 35% – so they’re going to keep an eye on that, but everything else looked normal.  The stress test was definitely successful in stressing me out.  One of the nurses commented afterwards that my heart rate only got up to 118, so I was feeling a little dejected – like I’d failed or something.  When I met with Dr. Murphy, though, they brought in the results for him to look over, and he commented, “Well, I’m glad to see you’re not a faker.”  I asked him how he could tell, and he said there are numbers in the results that can indicate pretty decisively whether a patient was really pushing themselves to their limit.  He said I probably went “beyond the limit, in fact.”  So I felt validated.

We talked about the results from my second CT Scan:  The swollen patches are still there, unchanged.  He intends to re-present the case to his collegues, but they’re probably just going to check them again in six months.  The clotting they noticed in my artificial conduit last time is gone.  That’s my favorite news, because it grants me a six month reprive from the Coumadin issue.  Then we talked about adoption.  He is hesitant to sign my physician form.  He said he’d like to read through the paperwork and think it over.  I presume he’ll let me know when he’s made a decision.