My doctor appointment

I know this is Marshall's blog, but today was my doctor appointment so it's the lead story.

First of all, I have learned that the doctor I'm seeing is not a cardiologist.  It is my fault for not being very clear when I made the appointment with the Cardiology Department.  Dr. Huang is an internist who specializes in cardiovascular disease.  But I do like her and for my purposes at this point, she will do just fine.

She went over all my tests with me.  The echocardiogram showed normal heart function and no blockages.  She said that the left side of my heart is slightly enlarged so that is something we have to watch.  It is possible that a slight enlargement is normal for me but we won't know for sure until we repeat the testing in a year.

She also said that a valve that goes to my heart is also slightly enlarged and we will watch that as well.  If it gets larger she believes a valve replacement might be in order.  However, she thought that was highly unlikely.

The stress test was also good.  She said that the majority of people who take the stress test do it at 40% capacity but I did 60% so that indicated a strong heart.

So based on the tests -- and on the fact that the episodes have lessened (and she agreed that the magnesium could be a reason for that) -- she is prescribing an additional drug for me, something called flecanide, to work in conjunction with the Metropolol that I am already taking and, of course, the baby aspirin every day.  She feels that may stop the episodes entirely.  I see her again in two months for a status update.

I am glad to finally have a plan of action.  It makes me feel better.

Now I suppose you'd like to hear a little about Marshall.  Tomorrow we head up to the cancer center for more lab work and a visit with the Nurse Practitioner.  We'll see what the PSA is doing and then maybe schedule repeat scans.  He felt pretty decent today but he always gets majorly depressed over these visits.  So he stayed medicated today.

We're going to spend the night and on Friday we thought we'd drive around in the area where we lived when we were in Denver.  We liked it so if there are houses for sale, we would consider moving back to Henderson, CO.  Our timing sucks, though.  When we sold our house in 2007 we had to pretty much give it away.   Today, the same model house that we lived in is selling for about $60,000 more than we got for our house.  If only we could have held out.....