Stress Test Results

My new cardiologist decided he needed to see how my heart functioned on it's own and what specifically was working and what wasn't. He took me off my primary medication for 48 hours and did a regular echo and then a stress echo.

An echo is an ultrasound of my heart. A stress echo measures how your heart functions when your heart rate is raised, so they put me on a treadmill and got my heart rate above 156 beats per minute, then had me lie down and quickly did the echo before my heart rate slowed.

The first echo (non-stress), showed what every echo I've had has shown. My ejection fraction (EF - the percentage of blood pumped out with each heartbeat) was 45%. (Normal is 65%, although as long as it's about 55%, it's considered within normal range. Once you get down to 35%, you have to take blood thinners because your blood starts to clot.) This doctor showed me exactly how my heart was working. Your heart is divided into four  chambers by muscles, and with each heartbeat, the muscles on the outside of your heart contract, while the muscles on the inside expand, making each chamber much smaller and forcing the blood into either the next chamber or into your body. The muscles on the outside of my heart were contracting, but not as much as they should. The muscles on the inside weren't expanding nearly at all. He showed us the top view of one of the chambers of my heart, and we could see the thin light gray circle of muscles contracting during each heartbeat and the big black pool of blood in the middle. It was nice to be able to actually see and understand what was happening.

Then he brought up the results of the stress echo. He told us that during that test, my EF was 65%. My heart worked perfectly. He brought up both results so we could see the difference. The biggest difference was the view of the individual chamber. The first echo had shown a pretty thin gray circle and a huge black pool in the middle; the stress echo results were completely gray (meaning the whole muscle was working).

He thinks what I had was actually viral cardiomyopathy and I've healed from it. The medications I'm on are so strong, it didn't show up when I healed. The side effects I've experienced in the last several months have been from the medication. The medications slow my heart down, so every time I would be active enough to get my heart working, the meds would shut it down.

I can't just go off the medications. It took them six months to get me up to the doses I'm on, and that was rushing it because I was doing so poorly. It's going to take him 6-9 months to get me down to the doses he wants me on. Because of how this has affected my heart, I will have to take low doses of my two primary medications for the rest of my life. I will never be back to where I was before this happened, but I've been functioning at 5-10% of what I used to be, and stepping those medications down should allow me to get a significant amount of my energy and abilities back. We don't know what our new normal will be, but at this point, functioning at 75-80% of where I used to be would be an amazing blessing :)

After my first appointment, he took me completely off one of the three medications I was on for my heart and my energy levels jumped to about 20%. After this second appointment, he halved the medication I'm on the highest dose of and my energy levels have soared (for me - I'm still probably only at 30-40% of where I used to be, but it's better than I've felt since before I was diagnosed).

Granted, feeling that much better led me to push myself all week and I've crashed three times so far today, leading Rob to sigh and roll his eyes because I can't do anything halfway :) He's told me I need to stay in bed tomorrow. *sigh* I'm not good at taking things slowly.

I can tell I'm getting better because I'm noticing all the things I want to change around the house. Rob says having me feeling better is worth having to clean like I used to clean, and replace the dining room table and couches, and rearrange rooms, and redecorate. We'll have to see if he still thinks that after I actually start doing those things instead of just talking about them ;)

I'm not sure it's really sunk in yet for either of us. We've told the kids that I'm getting better, but it's going to take 6-9 months for me to get there. It just feels so weird. The hell and heartbreak we've spent the last two and a half years going through are over. This is not going to kill me. I'll get to watch my kids grow up. Rob and I will have a chance to do the things we've always wanted to do as we grow old together. I get my life back. I get to be able to do things with my kids and Rob and my friends.

I can now officially say I'm a heart disease survivor :)

I think I'm going to start working towards running the Boston Marathon :)