Merry-Go-Round

Had some unsettling news yesterday from my cardiologist. It seems my left superior pulmonary vein is closing up again. At least, that’s what the lung scan is telling us. The inferior vein (the smaller and lower of the two veins to the left lung) has completely closed, so we need to keep this one open so I can keep the lung.

However, back in June, my doctor put a teeny tiny plastic stent in the vein when it had shrunk down to less than a millimeter in diameter (they like ’em to be ten or more millimeters wide). That was the risky procedure, primarily due to the chance of tearing the vein. Now it appears the healthy tissue inside my heart is growing over the hole held open by the stent. It’s starting to constrict the blood flow into the left lung, to the point where the left lung is only handling 14 percent of my blood oxygenation (down from 21 percent seven months ago).

If necessary, my doctor will go back in with a teeny tiny balloon and reinflate the opening around the stent. He assures me that it won’t be as risky as the surgery back in June. If he does have to do this, this will be the sixth time in two-and-a-half years I’ll have this type of procedure done. I’m really getting sick of it, you know? By now I’m quite familiar with the drill. You get stripped, shaved, pricked with a couple of IVs, take a dreamless nap in an ice-cold room, wake up and spend a nice night in a cozy hospital bed, and hobble out the doors the next morning. Sigh.

Here’s the possible get-outta-jail-free card. He wants me to take another lung scan in six weeks, sometime around the beginning of June. There’s a chance that – who knows? – there could have been an error in the last lung scan. Maybe it was mis-interpreted by the radiologist. Maybe it fell within the percentage of allowable error. Maybe something will change in the next six weeks. Who knows? Stranger things have been known to happen.

The most frustrating thing is that I can do nothing to affect an outcome one way or another. It’s my body just trying to heal itself, not realizing that in doing so it’s hurting itself. It’s similar to when a body rejects a transplanted organ. No amount of exercise, clean living, vitamins, affirmations, whatever, will stop the heart from trying to repair itself, unless, of course, it suddenly stops doing it on its own accord. I’m really amazed at how little doctors know. Medicine, and science, I suppose, is really just a huge faith-based system some times.

Anyway, that’s the scoop. Just to keep you in the loop.