I waited for over an hour to see her and was forced to stand up in the waiting room when no one would give up their seat. There should be a massive sign with 'ANY FUCKER THAT DOESN'T HAVE A HEART CONDITION STAND UP!'
To start off with she asked me if I'd had any problems with my breathing or with heart palpitations (when your heart feels like it's racing) and I said no to both. Then it was straight down to business. She said the Echo of my heart in May had shown my heart function was up from 15% to 25%.
What I mean by heart function is EF (Ejection Fraction) which is the force your heart pumps blood around the body with each heart beat. Normal levels are 45% and above. So mine is still very low.
I was a bit confused at what she said afterwards. She said there's a room for error with the percentages, so my heat could have been at 20% when I first came in or could be at 20% now. So my celebration was cut short. I'll be having another Echo in September at the 6 month mark. Then we'll have a much better idea if my heart is improving.
This is better than being told my heart was getting worse. Then it'd be brown trousers/needing a new heart time.
She then brought up a subject that's been on my mind a lot since being diagnosed with Dilated Cardiomyopathy. Having kids.
She said it's best for now if I don't try to get pregnant (well duh, I thought) and if my heart improves we can discuss the possibility of it at a later date.
The reason it would be unbelievably, monumentally stupid for me to get pregnant now is that my heart is too weak. Pregnancy is a huge strain on the body so the chances of me and a bubba surviving while my heart is working at a 25% capacity are very, very low.
I'm not thinking about having kids right this second but....this hurt. My body has betrayed me.
I spent most of my 20's in chronic pain suffering with endometriosis (not fun, look it up) and I had an operation in January to fix it, which it did. HUZZAH! But the operation put enough stress on my crap heart to push me into heart failure. BOOOOO.
But actually having that operation could have saved my life. I had no idea my heart was buggered. And apparently lots of younger people with this condition just keep going until their hearts give out. So I feel lucky. Yay me for not dying!
Good news was that my blood pressure is creeping up, while my heart rate is going down.
There is still some scar tissue on my heart and they aren't sure what's caused it. We don't know if this is a genetic condition or if it was caused by a nasty virus. As a result of this I've had to give a letter to my Mum, Dad, Sister and Brother they need to take to their doctors so everyone can get screened.
I know it isn't my fault, but I feel so horrendously guilty for bringing this on them. I'm sure it's going to end up being a virus (as are most of my doctors) but better to be safe than sorry.
Anyway. After all that I'm going to spend the rest of today stuffing my face and hiding under my duvet because of all the FEELZ I have to deal with.
No comments:
Post a Comment