Heart Cath – Mission Accomplished.

Well, the heart cathe is done! And it was fine. No blood squirting across the room, no excruciating pain, no emergencies. Thank You, Lord!

The worst part of the day was dealing with all the people…nurses, doctors, fellows, residents…none of which seem to communicate with each other. I had to ask a fellow to double check on what they were actually planning to do because she was convinced that I was having a right and left heart cath. She did double check, and wouldn’t you know, I was right. I really try hard not to get frustrated with all of the questions and miscommunications but I was having trouble yesterday. I hadn’t eaten since the day before and I was grumpy. One of the nurses asked if I had a cold when I coughed…I said “No, I’m just waiting for a double lung transplant, not to be to blunt.” That was probably should have controlled my tongue a little better…

The procedure really wasn’t bad at all! What they had to do was stick this tube thingie up a vein in my leg and thread it all the way up to the right side of my heart. They could then check different types of pressures in my heart. The gave me pain meds and some mild sedation and I didn’t feel a thing! All of the people in the OR were so nice and talked to me and made sure I was comfortable the whole time. It was actually the most pleasant part of the whole day!

After I was finished, I slept on and off in the recovery room. There was more frustrations with a few of the nurses, but after 3 hours Mom and I headed home.

My CF doctor told me the reason they do a heart cath as part of the evaluation is to (“Not to be too graphic,” he said) decide which new lung they should put in first when they do the transplant. Yeah, that is kind of too graphic for me. I like to think of the transplant as me being put to sleep and then waking up with a nice big scar and new lungs…not so much what is actually happening while I’m out.

Now I just want to end this post by saying thank you for your prayers. Thank you for your encouragement and for reading our blog. You have no idea how much it means to us : )

- Rachel