Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Happy Heart

Good news.

Had an appointment for Little Warrior to get an echocardiogram and an EKG -- her first, since going off of the heart medicine.  

Perfectly normal.

Which indicates that the heart problem was due to all of her organs being squished into her chest by the tumors ... and not a completely separate, coincidental case of cardiomyopathy.

Which was my contention all along.

We're very grateful, of course.  And I'm a bit ambivalent about the whole situation.

Here's the deal ... 

LW received chemo before her surgery, to try and shrink the tumors.  They didn't shrink.  So the oncological team recommended that we go to another chemo, a class that can cause later heart problems.

We had to get okayed by the cardiologist.  The cardiologist said that she had a separate, unrelated heart problem, and that if she took that type of chemo, it could cause immediate heart failure.

This cardiologist has also written papers about this chemo and how it shouldn't be used.

Upshot:  we didn't do the chemo; we had the surgery immediately, it went well, all has been fine since.  Knock-wood-Please-God-Thank-Yew-Jesus.

I'm grateful she didn't have that chemo.  But I feel like we were manipulated.

Hmm.

1 comment:

Boobless Brigade Master said...

Yay for the wonderful news!