I had another clinic appointment on Tuesday this week and 13 hours in emerg yesterday. I've got lots to update, unfortunately nothing very helpful at all.
The biggest issue discussed on Tuesday was my blood pressure. It has been high lately and I am convinced that it is the reason I have been having the fatigue an shortness of breath, however my doctor does not agree. He has been pushing the issue of checking my lungs. Before this last appointment, I had 3 tests done, but the doc only had the results of the CT scan of my lungs. The good news is that that was clear. The pulmonary function test and endoscopy results were not back yet. The doctor and I are on the same page about the high blood pressure being caused by one (or many) of the meds that I'm on, however he explained why I'm on everything and unfortunately the only option at this point was to put me on a blood pressure medication to try to lower it as I cannot come off any of the meds I'm currently on at this point. While I'm not happy about having to go on more medication instead of less, hopefully this will help me feel better in the meantime.
Another issue that came up on Tuesday was that my platelets have dropped. They are not low enough to require a transfusion and my other (red/white blood cell) counts were fine. The doctor had no idea what could be causing this, but is going to monitor it and if necessary will check my bone marrow again to see if we can get some answers. The appointment on Tuesday was left with me coming back again next week and getting a referral to a respirologist for the shortness of breath and getting an echocardiogram (heart ultrasound).
Wednesday morning just before 2am I woke up having chest pain. By 2:30 it had not gotten better, so Kendall and I went to the emergency room. I got a bed pretty quickly and they hooked me up to a heart monitor, checked my vitals and did an EKG. I saw the emerg doc around 4am and he ordered a chest xray which came back clear and said he would page hematology for them to decide if I should be admitted or if they wanted to order any other tests or leave it up to my transplant doc on Tuesday. A few hours later, we found out that there was no hematologist on call that night and we would have to wait until after one came in at 8am. Sometime around 10am (I think?) a respirology resident came to see me. I was then sent to nuclear medicine to test for a pulmonary embolism. The good news is that test came back negative and the respirologist was able to get the results from last week's pulmonary function test. Everything is clear in my lungs - no infections or GVHD showing up at all. The bad news is that we still don't have any answers about the chest pain, fatigue or shortness of breath.
I never did get to see a hematologist in the 13 hours we were in emerg and we came home and crashed after being there so long on only 2 hours of sleep. I still believe this is connected to the high blood pressure and am going to have to wait patiently for the next test in a couple of weeks. Next clinic appointment is next week, so there may or may not be something to update then.
No comments:
Post a Comment