(The title is a reference to this round I used to sing as a kid, in case you didn't catch that.)
As you may remember, after all this breast cancer business was over, I asked if I would still be followed for all the Hodgkin's treatment side effects. Seemed to make sense, since the Hodgkin's treatments are what likely caused the breast cancer. So I went to Dr. Constine, who specializes in long term survivors of childhood radiation treatments. Ding!
Okay, now that you are caught up, last week I had all the scans he ordered. Basically, he wanted to check out all the areas that were in the field of radiation, and then continue to check them at regular intervals. So the scans he ordered included: chest X-ray, neck ultrasound, and stress echo.
The first two were straightforward. The X-ray was just like dozens of other chest X-rays I have gotten in my life, and the ultrasound was like the many breast ultrasounds I have had, except this was (duh) of my neck. (By the way, neither breasts nor necks are nearly as interesting to watch on a screen as hearts or, I suspect, babies.)
The stress echo, on the other hand, gave me a wee glimpse into the complexity of life-after-breast cancer, at least as far as following me medically. If you are unfamiliar with this procedure, here is how it goes: you have an echocardiogram of your heart at rest, which includes many cords hooked up around the chest, and a gooey wand, and then you can watch your heart pump on the screen. That part is cool. Then they put you on a treadmill and you start off walking at a slight incline, then after three minutes the incline and speed increase, then again after three more minutes, then again... you get the idea. You do this until your heart has reached what you think is maximum capacity, pounding as hard as it can. Then you jump off the treadmill and back onto the echo table and they take more pictures, now of your heart working as hard as it can. You only have about a minute to do this, especially if you are in decent shape and your heart rate quickly drops after exercise stops.
Not the most fun test, especially if you're like me and you're very competitive and never want to admit that yes, this is as hard as my heart can work. (Instead, it was a race with the clock, an insistence that I can make it just one more level... Silly Johanna.) But it is pretty straightforward at least.
Or, it is if you don't have implants, and haven't had lymph nodes removed. The first problem was the implants. They cast a shadow on the heart, and the silicone is not easy to see through. He tried every angle to get a good view, but not always with good luck. No problem - they have a dye they can inject that lights everything up and makes it easier to see. It needs to go in via an IV. I can't have IVs in my left arm because I had lymph nodes removed on that side. So it went into the right arm. But then, they also have to take my blood pressure at various intervals during this process, and I also can't have my blood pressure taken on my left side because of the lymph nodes, and the right side already had an IV in it. Oy. I'm not sure what they finally decided to do - it was some different sort of cuff - but they got it working well enough to get the gist of it, I guess. Then when it came time to run, I had thoughtfully worn a sports bra, because the plastic surgeon's office had insisted I must avoid bouncing and always wear a sports bra when exercising with the newbie boobies... but it didn't occur to me that a sports bra would get in the way of the echo. Yeesh!
So there I ran, sports bra pulled down around my waist, hospital gown taped shut, cables hanging off of me, and at the height of all this, when I feel like I'm gonna keel over, the nurse trying to inject this special dye into my arm (which was the arm on the wall side, of course) as I huff and puff and sprint up a 16% incline. Needless to say, it was not my favorite 10 minutes of the day.
But the good news is that my blood pressure is enviable, and my heart rate dropped back to normal after only a couple minutes, which means I'm in great shape! They don't get such healthy people in the cardio unit very often, so they were very pleased to see this. At least I have this going for me.
Now if I could just get back to using my strong heart on the soccer field!
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