{"id":141,"date":"2017-12-22T23:04:47","date_gmt":"2017-12-23T07:04:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kreklewetz.com\/asd\/?p=141"},"modified":"2020-11-18T07:25:42","modified_gmt":"2020-11-18T15:25:42","slug":"heart-needs-fixing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kreklewetz.com\/asd\/2017\/12\/22\/heart-needs-fixing\/","title":{"rendered":"Heart Needs Fixing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I finally saw my cardiologist and received my MRI results. I think the stress of it all just hit me the morning I saw Dr. D. I live in denial with what’s going on for the most part. I feel “normal,” so I can’t quite believe that I have a serious heart problem. But as soon as I saw Dr. D. and he started talking about surgery, it all became too<\/em> real. It hit me like a tonne of bricks and I completely panicked in his office- felt faint, nauseous, and dizzy. Not fun.<\/p>\n

He told me that I definitely have an Atrial Septal Defect. The right side of my heart is strained and dilated, so that would explain why I’ve been having chest pain when I exercise. My inferior vena cava and pulmonary artery are also dilated. He said that I definitely do need to get it repaired. He estimated that I would have had maybe two years before there was\u00a0serious<\/em> damage done, and then it could have been too late to repair it with surgery. That’s scary. On one hand I feel so blessed that this was found! But on the other hand I’m scared of surgery. I’m trying to just focus on the blessed part.<\/p>\n

He sent my file to the surgeons at Royal Columbian Hospital, and they will decide what kind of surgery it will be. They often repair the defect with a catheter procedure<\/a>, which is minimally invasive, but he didn’t know if I’d be a candidate for that or not. The other option is open heart surgery, on bypass, the whole nine yards. That is what I’m scared of, for obvious reasons. It’s a major surgery and I’ve never had surgery before- never even broken a bone. I got a referral to my cardiac surgeon today, Dr. L., and of course I Googled him. From what I found, it looks like the bulk of what he does is open heart procedures, which makes me think I was referred to him because that’s what I need.<\/p>\n

My appointment isn’t until March 7th, so I’m back to the waiting game. I’m staying positive though, focusing on gratitude that this defect was found and that I have an access to amazing health care. Vancouver does have world class surgeons and world class facilitates. I’m grateful to live here. Also, I’m still running. I get tired a lot, and can’t breathe very well when I run, but if I don’t push myself too hard, I don’t get chest pain very often.\u00a0 I run with gratitude knowing that if I need open heart surgery, my running will have to be put on hold for quite awhile. I can run now <\/em> though, so I’m taking advantage of it and appreciating each step.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I finally saw my cardiologist and received my MRI results. I think the stress of it all just hit me the morning I saw Dr. D. I live in denial with what’s going on for the most part. I feel “normal,” so I can’t quite believe that I have a serious heart problem. But as …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9,3,7],"class_list":{"0":"post-141","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-journey","7":"tag-asd","8":"tag-cardiologist","9":"tag-mri","10":"anons"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kreklewetz.com\/asd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kreklewetz.com\/asd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kreklewetz.com\/asd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kreklewetz.com\/asd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kreklewetz.com\/asd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.kreklewetz.com\/asd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":448,"href":"https:\/\/www.kreklewetz.com\/asd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions\/448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kreklewetz.com\/asd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kreklewetz.com\/asd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kreklewetz.com\/asd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}