So, yesterday I had my echocardiogram and my appointment with my general surgeon which both went well.
An echocardiogram is a scan done to get a detailed picture of your heart and the valves within your heart. We needed to do this just to make sure my heart was in good condition before the major spinal surgery next week. They put some very cold gel on your chest and then use a probe that emits sound waves in order to form a picture of your heart. It is basically the same thing as an ultrasound you get when you are pregnant, but of your heart. It took about a half an hour and is slightly uncomfortable, but not at all painful. I then had to get the results faxed over the the Chiari Institute today so that of course took a couple of phone calls, but thankfully we got it sent over all ok! I'm assuming that since I wasn't told otherwise that the results came back fine. I just had one in February that was fine, so there is no reason that this one should not be.
I then had my appointment with my general surgeon who put in the port 2 weeks ago. He said my incisions are healing wonderfully and they look great. I shouldn't have to go see him at all any more unless I have any problems! I did have some blood on the bottom of my bandage that is on my port a couple of times, so I asked him about that. He said it is completely normally and is just my skin getting used to having a needle in there for so long. The one issue I had was that he moved the bandaged to get a closer look at my incision and apparently the bandage wasn't sticky enough when he put it back on, so when I went to take a shower the bandaged filled up with water! Well that was interesting! So I had to do an emergency re-bandaging and re-sanitize everything. I think it should be just fine and Joseph (my fiance) and I got it all sealed up again!
I also had to get a few of my MRI reports and my operative report from my decompression surgery last year sent off to The Chiari Institute, so that took a number of phone calls and a visit to Loyola where my surgery was done last year. Thankfully we were already in downtown Chicago for Joseph's graduation so we were able to stop in on the way home. Everything got faxed over so we should now have everything we need from Illinois sent over the The Chiari Institute.
I did get a call from my primary care physician today with results from my blood work that they did on Monday. She had decided to check my thyroid levels since I mentioned to her that I was shakey, which has been a new symptom for me. Well the results came back that something called my TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) is elevated. This means that my thyroid is hypoactive (or underactive). So when we get back from NY and I start to recover a little bit I need to make an appointment with an endocrinologist, who is the specialist who handles thyroid problems. This could be causing some of my symptoms such as cold intolerance, fatigue, brain fog, and constipation. It does not surprise me that my thyroid is off and it was something I wanted to get checked relatively soon, so now we will just get it checked a little sooner than we expected. It is a simple fix for most thyroid problems and it will just be another medication added into my regimen!
I had some concerns about flying with my port accessed (needle in it) due to security issues and what not, but we have contacted TSA and they said that we should be just fine. I will have to go through a couple of extra security measures, but hopefully we should have no problems. Please pray that this is not an issue!
I will update again once we are in NY either Sunday night when we get there, or more likely Monday after my appointments. The first thing I go do Monday morning is a CT scan of my neck that will show us the instability that is present in my spine, then at 9:30 I meet with a nurse for a neurological examination, and finally at 10:30 I meet with my neurosurgeon Dr. Rekate.
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