Echocardiogram

Well,  my echocardiogram was actually kind of fun today. I had an ultrasound technician named Mimi. I asked her a few questions about what was happening, and it turns out she loves to answer questions, so we spent 30 minutes chatting, with some pauses between to hold my breath when needed. She views herself as a good medical resource to help answer people’s questions and make them feel comfortable, since she!s there with you for over half an hour, and she might as well talk!

She said that they run this test as a baseline before starting chemo. It shows the structure of the heart to make sure there are no abnormalities as well as the flow of the blood within the heart. They will repeat the test later to make sure all is going well, because the drugs can damage the heart. I’m supposed to notice if I get breathless, or more tired than just chemo tiredness, and tell my cancer team. They would then order a new echo test and could then stop the chemo or switch to new drugs to avoid further heart damage and work to help it heal. She said in the 10 years she’s been doing this, only one chemotherapy patient has had to stop the chemo as a result of heart damage from the drugs, so that was good news! She also said it’s a vast improvement from the way it was done before this test was available, because they didn’t notice in time that the heart was being damaged.

She talked about listening to the blood flow patterns to detect leaks and blood going back through the valves the wrong way, measuring the width of the different openings, and the fact that the color red on the graphs was just talking about blood, rather than being a warning color. 

I asked if women were harder to test due to breasts being in the way, and she said no. Mean are harder for her to do because there’s nothing there to anchor the position of the ultrasound wand, so the slippery gel lets it wander off course. She said”man boobs” don’t help either because they don’t have the same structure as breasts, and the hardest is testing people with mastectomies because the wand slips on the bumps of the ribs.

She obviously couldn’t tell me any results today, but said they should be ready by Friday or Monday when a doctor would call me.

I also took a walk “with” Suzi today - she called on the phone while she was walking, and said it was pretty nice out, so I went out and walked while we talked - so much nicer than walking by myself!