Workup Week - Day 3

Its day three today, almost half done!

Today was another early morning and not being able to eat breakfast again. At 7:30am we were at Diagnostic Imaging for a CT scan, VQ scan, and many x-rays. Lots of confusion today as I was supposed to have the CT scan first because it was booked, but they took me for the chest x-rays first. After the chest x-rays they took me for the VQ scan. I had no idea what this was until I got there. It is a scan that takes about 45 minutes and it looks at the gas exchange in your lungs and also the air movement. First they get you to inhale some special gas that they watch in your lungs by taking several pictures. After that they injected a dye into my picc line and took more pictures. After the VQ scan they took me to CT scan, but since they messed up my appointment that was scheduled for earlier I was waiting an awfully long time. Finally, someone took me down to use the emergency departments CT scanner as I was going to miss my next appointment. 3 hours later and all of the scans are finally completed. At 10:30am we were back in the Mazankowski Heart Institute to meet with Dr. Mullen who is a cardiovascular surgeon. I am still a little worried about the surgery because of the bacteria that I have but Dr.Mullen said that he has transplanted a number of patients with rare, weird bacterias and most have done very well with little complications so that made me feel better. After we talked about that he discussed in length with us about the possibility of living donors. I am interested in living donors and will look into this soon as an option in case my health deteriorates quicker than they can find a donor.

This was all of the tests scheduled for today so at about noon we packed up and came home for the night, as I also have no appointments or tests until Friday morning. We are planning on coming back up to Edmonton Thursday night and stay in the hotel again to avoid having to get up so early and fight with traffic getting into the city.