I had my pre-admission clinic visit yesterday, which I like to refer to as a hospital scavenger hunt. I arrived at the clinic at 9am and was sent off into the depths of the hospital with a map, a pencil, instructions to visit the lab and cardiology department, and told to report back to the clinic at 10:15, hence the feeling of a scavenger hunt. The lab was busy so that it took me the full hour to get my blood work done. I came back to the clinic and met with a nice nurse who asked me a ton of questions, looked at all my meds and supplements, and took my vitals, height, and weight. Then I went off to cardiology to get my ECG. (Sinus bradycardia but otherwise normal ECG.) I returned to the clinic and logged onto myehealth.ca to see if my lab results were processed yet, and to my surprise, they were posted! (All normal, except for high chloride.)
I waited awhile longer, then visited the last stop on my list- anesthesiology. Again, I answered a ton of questions, mostly that the nurse had already asked me. The anesthesiologist then went over the procedure and told me what to expect. He assured me that this was a much better option than open heart surgery, since it’s minimally invasive. That’s the third doctor who feels this way, so that destroys my belief that open heart surgery is somewhat “better.” He also was very surprised that I still run with a hole this big in my heart, measuring 2 square centimeters. “A+ for effort!” he said. He assured me that I’d feel much better after the procedure. I’m so used to being tired all the time, sleeping my life away, not able to breathe when I run, usually feeling run down, and frequently plagued with chest pain that this has become “normal” to me. I’m starting to get excited for a new normal!
Eleven days to go!