Wednesday, June 29, 2005

As We Catch Up

TOW caught everyone up on our activities in our abscence, but I have to toss in my impressions. For openers, I want to throttle a doctor--maybe more. For the past few years she has been lectured about the various stages of her heart condition. Along with the hypertension she was told by one Primary that the high blood pressure caused her heart to work harder and thus she has an enlarged heart. Same doctor hinted that with a lack of diligence on her meds, and her persistant smoking, she may have veered into the territory of a conjestive heart.

Well my bride researched conjestive heart failure and noticed she possessed many symptoms, including repeated bouts of difficuly breathing. Also, the survival rate was slim and rarely beyond 5 years. The panic in this home was palpable, but I tried to tell her not to form a conclusion until she spoke with her new primary in the coming days. Big Mistake. The day of her appointment I get a call at my office, my wife in tears. The new medics saw her EKG and were stunned to the point that they wanted my wife to go directly to the hospital to get examined. I showed up at their offices and the doctors were walking around with saucer-eyed expressions like The Odd One was some kind of specter. They kept saying "OK, we're not going to panic about this," all the while behaving as if they had witnessed an execution. Needless to say my wife was spooked.

These pros were saying things like she has not A heart murmur but a series of murmurs, that she may have failure in one entire quadrant of the heart, and were even speculating that sometime recently she may have had a small heart attack. So we were not worried in the least. The two of us loaded up on reading material for what was surely going to be a marathon at a hospital reputed to be among the best for cardio care. After a few hours the test results came in.

All the blood work showed no levels of a problem, including no conjestive evidence. Then the doctor came to explain that her previous X-rays were taken with her lying down and her heart essentially pancaked so it appeared enlarged but was actually normal. He said these new doctors had no clue how to read an EKG and showed us how their new chart matched the previous, and explained that it also resembled his own chart, and he is a marathon runner.

The good thing is that TOW is fine, but I still harbor fantasies about reaching into the chest of a doctor like Bruce Lee, to show them their own beating organ in my hand. You know, just so they get to see what a healthy heart actually looks like.

Posted by Anonymous :: 7:58 AM :: | ---------------------------------------