Heart Sick (5)
My first appointment with the cardiologist at the National Heart Institute was scheduled on 2.30pm. While waited for the doctor, they did an echocardiogram on me, similar to the one I did while I was warded in Gleneagles. But I didn’t get to see the doctor till almost 5pm. It’s typical of how government hospitals operate I guess? But I thought they should know better not to stress heart patients…
Based on the echocardiogram, the reports from my previous cardiologist and the video of my earlier angiogram done at Gleneagles, the doc said he was quite sure an open heart surgery was my obvious option. He then wanted me to do another test, called Nuclear Viability Test (or Positron Emission Tomography, or myocardial perfusion imaging, ya lots of fanciful names but my guess is there are all the same), where a radioactive substance was to be injected into my vein, then a giant scanning machine will be able to produce 3-D pictures of my heart to determine if there is adequate blood flow to the heart and assess the amount of damage to the heart after the heart attack. The doc is to use this to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed by-pass surgery.
But I couldn’t take the test as yet, as it has a long waiting list; it was June and my appointment was somewhere in September… hmm… not sure if I could outlive the test date!
Luckily for me, as the doctor was kind enough to put me on ‘standby’ – I would have to be at the lab within 4 hours’ notice – I could jump queue if someone cancelled his appointment. Waited anxiously for 2 weeks and they finally called! It turned out less scarier than I expected (hey we are talking about injecting some NUCLEAR stuff into my body and go through a GAMMA RAY scan here!); I was given a shot of the nuclear tracer and asked to rest in the waiting room for 2 hours. They then made me lie on a bed and put an IV line on my arm, more wires on my body connected to some equipment, took my blood pressure… then I was pushed into a big scanner, with its camera kept moving around me for 20 minutes or so. Then it’s over. No pain.
They promised to call me once the report was out.
It cost me RM850 and 5 hours.
- HS
Based on the echocardiogram, the reports from my previous cardiologist and the video of my earlier angiogram done at Gleneagles, the doc said he was quite sure an open heart surgery was my obvious option. He then wanted me to do another test, called Nuclear Viability Test (or Positron Emission Tomography, or myocardial perfusion imaging, ya lots of fanciful names but my guess is there are all the same), where a radioactive substance was to be injected into my vein, then a giant scanning machine will be able to produce 3-D pictures of my heart to determine if there is adequate blood flow to the heart and assess the amount of damage to the heart after the heart attack. The doc is to use this to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed by-pass surgery.
But I couldn’t take the test as yet, as it has a long waiting list; it was June and my appointment was somewhere in September… hmm… not sure if I could outlive the test date!
Luckily for me, as the doctor was kind enough to put me on ‘standby’ – I would have to be at the lab within 4 hours’ notice – I could jump queue if someone cancelled his appointment. Waited anxiously for 2 weeks and they finally called! It turned out less scarier than I expected (hey we are talking about injecting some NUCLEAR stuff into my body and go through a GAMMA RAY scan here!); I was given a shot of the nuclear tracer and asked to rest in the waiting room for 2 hours. They then made me lie on a bed and put an IV line on my arm, more wires on my body connected to some equipment, took my blood pressure… then I was pushed into a big scanner, with its camera kept moving around me for 20 minutes or so. Then it’s over. No pain.
They promised to call me once the report was out.
It cost me RM850 and 5 hours.
- HS
Labels: My Brush With Life
posted by HS & SC at
11:37 AM
3 Comments:
You know… you are the happiest heart patient I know.
moonfish: thanks to supports from u and all others, which was my lifeline that pulled me through. It REALLY matters as without it things would probably turned out very differently.
i hope you will be better. May God bless you. No worries, things will turn out okay~
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