Sorry I've been off-line for a few days. I've had a bad week. Let me explain.

For the past several weeks, I have been feeling particularly fatigued. My day would go something like this:
0600 - 0830 = Get up. Help get one or two of the youngest kids ready. Drop youngest daughter off at school, and go to work.

0830 - 1430 = Work. Between 1400 and 1530, start feeling rather drowsy. Finally head home, arriving around 1600.

1600 - 1730 = Sleep (on and off) nestled under the electric blanket.

1730 - 1900 = Help with dinner. Play with kids.

1900 - 2000 = Fall asleep in front of television/fall asleep reading/fall asleep at dinner table (seeing a pattern yet?)

2000 - 2100 = Help get kids in bed.

2100 - 0600 = Sleep.

In other words, my body was so tired that I needed a lot more sleep than normal (between eleven and fourteen hours). I thought it might be anemia, mono, something like that.

But no, it couldn't be that simple. When I talked to the doctor, he asked if I had been experiencing chest pains, shortness of breath, that sort of thing. I mentioned one particular episode during which I could feel my heart racing and felt a little short of breath. He also mentioned that my heart was running at about 120 bpm. That's way too high, particularly given the fact that I had gotten out of bed twenty minutes earlier and driven in to see him -- no real physical activity involved. My blood pressure was around 144 over 88 -- again, too high. For safety's sake, he ordered an EKG.

When he got the results, he made a copy of the read, copied part of my chart, and sent me to the cardiologist at our local hospital.

Immediately. As in, it was 1100 hours, and he wanted her to see me before lunch.

Sigh. On my way to the hospital, I called Amy at work to let her know what was going on.

Understand that my wife is not big on doctors, does not like the fact I take several medications daily for ADHD, and frankly is annoyed that I tend to get allergy-related colds quite often. In her eyes, I "think" myself into being sick.

Shortly after I got to the hospital, she called. She was on the way over from Midlothian and wanted to know in what part of the hospital she could find me. That's when it really started to sink in that this could be very serious.

The cardiologist ran a new EKG. I was quite relieved when she told me that the bad stuff on the first EKG read did not appear on the new one. She ordered an echocardiograph "just to be safe". Then, she gave me some samples of a blood pressure medication and sent me on my way for the echocardiograph.

The echocardiograph was very interesting. Essentially, it is the same technology used to provide an ultrasound examination of a baby, only it also uses a version of Doppler radar to view the direction of blood flow through the heart. You can also listen to the heart, see the heart beating, and watch the valves in action. Very cool and interesting stuff.

In my test, I could hear a little "whoosh" on the back side of my beats. I asked what that was, and the technician told me it was probably a little backflow from a leaky valve.

Swell.

The tech did a couple of measurements to determine blood volume (by measuring the size of various chambers at the top of the systolic and diastolic portions of my heart beat -- i.e., the size of the chambers at their largest compared to the size at their smallest, and the size of each valve). Again, kind of cool to watch.

She then ran a test that looked a lot like my EKG, only this measured blood flow. As she got ready to run it, she told me the white areas under the baseline showed the normal flow through whichever valve she was examining, while markings above the baseline represented leakage.

Okay so far.

She then began examining various valves. Most had good flow, with a little leakage. She explained that the leakage looked "normal" and is the result of the fact the valves are "floppy" rather than "rigid".

Then she examined the valve to my aorta.

The baseline looked like it had snowdrifts on top of it. "Uh oh," I thought. My sense of foreboding was reinforced by the fact the technician (who, until then, had been happily chatting with me) suddenly got much quieter.

I then went home and slept a troubled sleep. That was Tuesday.

I stayed home Wednesday, and went back to my family doctor to complete some blood tests he had wanted to run Tuesday. Afterwards, I saw him briefly at the receptionist's window. He told me I had a moderate leak at my aortic valve. He also said that while that would cause some of the fatigue, he wanted to rule a few other things out.

The upside is that, at this time, it would not require surgery. Blood pressure medicine might help stabilize or even improve the valve's ability to restrict the leakage.

The downside is that if it gets a lot worse, the valve will have to be replaced. That is major surgery (open-heart surgery, essentially). The replacement valve will be one of two things: a 'biological' valve, or a mechanical valve. They have their own advantages and disadvantages.

A 'biological' valve is either a valve from a cadaver or from a pig. The advantage is that once it is installed, I don't have to take medication to prevent blood from clotting on the valve, and it is natural tissue. The disadvantage is that biological valves will wear down over time, so I could be looking at surgery to replace the thing every ten to fifteen years.

Mechanical valves last much longer -- probably for the rest of my life. That's the upside. The downside is that (1) they can set off metal detectors -- a pain in the rear given that I like to fly; and (2) they tend to have problems with blood clotting on the valve, so I would have to be on anti-coagulant medication for life.

Not fun. My father has had open heart surgery three times. I always told him I had no desire to break his record. I hope I can stick to that.

I don't know why this has developed. Apparently, my paternal great-grandfather had a leaky valve, and my father recently developed one, so it is possible that it is a congenital condition. I hope not, because I don't want to worry about my kids getting this.

In any event, the blood pressure medication seems to be helping (though it gives me a headache). I have a lot more energy today (Thursday) than I have had in a while. We'll see how long that lasts.

Finally, I told the two oldest kids about it last night. That was not fun (it sucked, actually), but they took it rather well.

So, we'll see what happens. Forgive me if I am a bit more erratic than usual about blogging in the weeks to come. My energy must be spent on work and family, so blogging may suffer.

Steve
- posted by MrSpkr @ 10:48