Running for Fun and Profit

It’s too bad I don’t have a previous stress echo to compare this to, since I’ve never had one before.

Anyway, my appointment was scheduled for Wednesday 9am at Northwestern in Chicago. I got back to work around 1:30pm, and I was right, they spent a billionty years digging into my ribs and various other spots. They say my anatomy doesn’t seem to match my diagnosis, which is somewhat amusing. He knows how CC-TGA, JAA, and dextrocardia can go together, but it seems counter-intuitive. But they found what they think were the correct atria and ventricles, so they think it’s ok. The doctor overseeing the echo wants me to pester UC for the MRI disk and anything else they’ve neglected to send… I guess hospitals in this area are generally terrible about forwarding records.

What they found? Everything looks good. He thinks my right ventricle is slightly weak, but since it’s supposed to supply the lungs and not the body, that’s pretty much expected. He saw some turbulence around my pulmonary artery, but said it hasn’t affected my left ventricle. Otherwise my heart scaled well to workload, blood-pressure reacted as they expected during the stress portion. They had to get me to the point where I was jogging uphill (16-degree incline) before my heart-rate hit 184, and the only reason I stopped is because my legs got tired (the cardio I do, DDR, doesn’t really use those muscles, normally I can maintain 85+% output for 2-3 hours).

I asked him if everything looked good partially because of all the conditioning I do, and he said it was probably a significant effect. I’d be much worse off were I a couch-potato. So I’m not sure what comes next. I assume Dr. Mendelsen will call to schedule a return visit to discuss the results, but that’s about all.

Until Tomorrow