Not the fun kind of PET- 4/15/2011

Hi All,

I'm sorry for not updating sooner! I've been pretty tired this week, and not quite feeling like writing yet.

I got home from the hospital on Monday evening. I was so sick of that place. I was there a week this time. I've stayed that long before, but for some reason this stint felt longer than the others. I'm not sure how, but this stay was more monotonous but also more nerve wracking than previous stays. It didn't help matters that my veins were not in the mood to give up blood, so every poke was painful and drawn out. I think they took blood 30 times while I was there. Good grief.

After all that time, the docs were no closer to figuring out the physiological reason for my heart attack. Obviously, it was triggered by the situation with our neighbor, but we need to determine why my body's response was to have a heart attack.

They did two angiograms and came to the conclusion that I still don't have any blockages at all. Good news, except that would have explained this and would have been treatable with a stent. So we're back at step one.

So my doc ordered a PET scan that I got today. In case you are like everyone else and don't know what a PET scan is- it's like a cat scan where you lay down in a huge machine that looks like a giant roll of paper towels. (Hmm, not sure if that is the right analogy. Anyway.) They then take tons of images of your heart (or whatever body part they are looking at). They literally took images for 6 intervals of 15-30 minutes each. So it was a lot of laying down. No real bother except when I decided I had to pee...1 minute into a 30 minute interval. It is really hard to think of anything besides peeing at that point, trust me.

The point of the scan is to look for sarcoidosis (mentioned a few posts ago) as well as look at my teeny weeny veins to look for blockages there. They also did another test to see how much of my heart muscle tissue is damaged. I guess that's just a FYI-I'm not sure what they would do with that info. Maybe it's for a bet between the doctors. (I like to imagine that the doctors have lots of wagers and races behind the scenes- just to keep things interesting).

Oh, and a lot of you have asked how our neighbor Pegi is doing. We haven't been able to find out any updates since last week, which is super frusterating. Last anyone heard, she had massive brain trauma and things didn't look good at all. Also, we haven't heard if the police are any closer to making an arrest. I just can't believe someone could get away with something so heinous. But I'm sure the police are doing everything they can. Anyway, please keep Pegi and her family in your thoughts and prayers. They need it.

I hope to get the results of the PET scan on Monday- I'll try to be better about updating you sooner with the deets. Sometimes the tests run together and I forget what I've talked about and what I haven't. Maybe I need a chart or an action plan to keep me on task...whoa,no, that's way too dorky.

That's all I've got for today...have a great weekend!!
Lots of love,
Jana

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