Cardiologist Appointment - June 15, 2010

Today is Thursday, July 08, 2010, and I am sitting at the Nephrologist's office with my company laptop and MS Word as my only friend. I realized that I have not blogged in WAY to long, and that it is time for me to update everyone on what has been going on. Today's post will concern my cardiology appointment from almost a month ago. I'll try to get another post later this week (or early next week) so that I don't have too much information in one post.

I saw my cardiologist back in June for my biannual (two times per year, not every two years) appointment with echocardiogram. They have been watching my mitral valve to make sure that everything is still working properly and that I am not getting worse.

Note: I said "they" because I recently changed cardiologists. The doctor that I had been seeing has "retired" to spend more time with her children. I'm all for this, as a principle, but was not overly excited to lose one of my favorite doctors. So, if she reads today’s blog, then she'll know I liked her. My new cardiologist is at the same practice, and was recommended by the previous one, so I'm not too worried about him. He's just new, and I will have to get used to him.

Now, I will get back to the appointment details. I had my echocardiogram, and it seemed about the same to me as all the others that I have received. However, when the doctor came to tell me the results, he had some bad news. It appears that my ejection fraction (I think) has gone from 60 to 70% down to about 55% (based on visual observation). This is not the best direction for that to go.

The doctor told me that he was slightly more concerned, based on the previous echocardiograms that had been taken. He said that he would like to see me every three months instead of every six months. He said that I still have a "moderately severe" mitral valve prolapse, but with the reduced flow through the valve, he'd like to see more often.

At some point in the future, I will need to have my valve replaced. It's not that time, yet, but the doctor wants to be careful and make sure that I do not suddenly have a major problem because of my mitral valve. So, he is going to watch me a bit more closely. I guess I will just have to wait and see.

Overall, it was a good appointment. The whole reason I was going in to have the echocardiogram every six months was to watch my mitral valve and make sure it was not getting worse. Since it has gotten a little worse, they now want to check me more often. Luckily, the echocardiogram showed what it needed to show, and they are now going to check me more often.

One day, I will need heart surgery to have my mitral valve replaced. I'm not sure what that will involve, but I'm sure it won't be pleasant. On the plus side, I've never had open heart surgery, so that will be new. It's always fun to have something to add to my "List of Surgeries."

That's it for today's post. I will have two more blog posts coming up soon, so stay tuned. Thanks for coming by to read.