1. I returned home this afternoon not long after 3:00 after being at the Kootenai Heart Clinic in Coeur d'Alene for a few hours. After I broke my fast and talked with Debbie when she arrived home from work, I did a little more reading about why transplant programs require that candidates for a kidney transplant must have their cardio health tested.
I wasn't wrong when I thought these tests were to assess whether my heart is healthy enough to withstand the transplant surgery.
BUT, what I hadn't realized is that about 30% of those transplant recipients who die, say, in the first year after the transplant, die of heart failure of some sort.
So, yes, the tests are evaluating the heart's capability to withstand the surgery, but also attempting to determine if it's likely cardiac complications might happen after the surgery.
This post-transplant concern hadn't sunk in my slow learning brain until today!
2. Yes, the testing required me to lie still a lot. I had to lie still during the echocardiogram. I had to stay put for about a half an hour after the tech inserted radioactive material into my circulatory system as part of the nuclear stress test to give the nuclear stuff time to circulate in my system. I had to lie still for sixteen minutes while a contraption, a big camera, slowly moved just above my chest and took 32 pictures. I then spent time on the treadmill in order to get my heart rate elevated and then it was back to lying still under the camera contraption for another twelve minutes and 32 more pictures. The idea is to have pictures of my heart before exercise and compare them with the pictures after the exercise.
One note: this was my fourth cardio stress test (2015,16, 19). I experienced more difficulty on the treadmill with each test. Today, for the first time, the nurse giving the test informed me that if the speed and steep tilt of the treadmill in the last three minutes of the test was too much for me, they have a medicine to administer that opens up the heart's arteries. I made it through the first treadmill speed up and tilt and nurse asked me if I were laboring. I said I was and she said, "No problem. Let's do the shot."
After the shot, I walked for about a minute and a half at a reasonable pace to give the medicine time to circulate and do its work.
I so preferred the shot to enduring a faster, steeper treadmill!
I was happily relieved.
3. When I went to bed last night, North Idaho was under a winter storm warning and I was uneasy about having to drive to CdA on snowy, possibly icy, roads and that it might be windy.
The storm didn't come.
The roads going to CdA and returning were great. I was very grateful that my trip over and back was easy and that the procedures at the Heart Center went so smoothly.
It all worked out.
Now I will await word from the committee evaluating my case to see if I am healthy enough to stay on the transplant list.
If the transplant program keeps me on the list, I'll have to decide whether to remain inactive or switch to active -- if I switch to active, it's likely I'd be offered a new kidney in the relatively near future because I have accrued so much time on the transplant list.
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