Bleh.. I'm a Saad Panda...
So yeah.. I've spent the last month wearing a heart monitor to find out what's going on with me. Went to the Cardiologist yesterday and they discerned from the echocardiogram that they took last month that I have the same thing as my Mom. IHSS - Idiopathic Hypertrophic Subaortic Stenosis also known as hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy. Doesn't that just sound like a boatload of fun? ;)
Basically what it all means is this: There are four chambers of the heart right? Well… the main chamber for pumping blood is the left ventricle. In my case, there is an enlargement in my left ventricle which does a few things such as narrowing the outflow of blood from the ventricle and reducing the ability of the valves to function properly. This also doesn't let my heart rest enough between beats, making me more susceptible to cardiac arrest.
Here's a picture of what it normally looks like if anyone is interested:
http://www.umm.edu/imagepages/18141.htm
And a really good article from the University of Maryland... they have one of the top programs ever for this kinda thing :)
http://www.umm.edu/ency/article/000192.htm
Thankfully we caught it now rather than in 10 years. I'm kinda freaked out by it all, and I don't quite know what to think so far. They put me on this medication called Toprol XL, which will help to reduce my risk of having a heart attack, but, it will also make me gain weight *sad panda* But the good news there is that this guy at Max Muscle in the mall has these pills that will keep me from gaining weight while I'm on Toprol... whee!
Another sucky part is that when we decide to have kids, I'm going to most likely have to have a cesarean simply because my heart cannot deal with the stress of going through labor... That's what my Mom had to do with Hannah, they had to knock her out and everything :( I guess we'll deal with that when the time comes around.
Thank God that Kevin is here... I don't feel so alone when it comes to this just because I know he's right there with me. I'm really scared... fucking petrified really... but I guess as long as I keep taking my meds and take it easy, I should be fine… and hopefully by the time anything happens to me, if anything does, it'll be far enough down the road that there will have been a few medical advances. There's one that's really experimental right now where they inject alcohol into the enlarged portion of the heart to kill off the excess cells... but yeah, I'm not going to go for anything like that until it has been perfected... *shudder*
*sigh*
Oh yeah... and the Toprol also makes me very very drowsy..of which I'm beginning to really feel the effects... I think that I'll end our little cardiology lesson there. ;)
(hehe, like my new picture of Sexual Harassment Panda?)
Basically what it all means is this: There are four chambers of the heart right? Well… the main chamber for pumping blood is the left ventricle. In my case, there is an enlargement in my left ventricle which does a few things such as narrowing the outflow of blood from the ventricle and reducing the ability of the valves to function properly. This also doesn't let my heart rest enough between beats, making me more susceptible to cardiac arrest.
Here's a picture of what it normally looks like if anyone is interested:
http://www.umm.edu/imagepages/18141.htm
And a really good article from the University of Maryland... they have one of the top programs ever for this kinda thing :)
http://www.umm.edu/ency/article/000192.htm
Thankfully we caught it now rather than in 10 years. I'm kinda freaked out by it all, and I don't quite know what to think so far. They put me on this medication called Toprol XL, which will help to reduce my risk of having a heart attack, but, it will also make me gain weight *sad panda* But the good news there is that this guy at Max Muscle in the mall has these pills that will keep me from gaining weight while I'm on Toprol... whee!
Another sucky part is that when we decide to have kids, I'm going to most likely have to have a cesarean simply because my heart cannot deal with the stress of going through labor... That's what my Mom had to do with Hannah, they had to knock her out and everything :( I guess we'll deal with that when the time comes around.
Thank God that Kevin is here... I don't feel so alone when it comes to this just because I know he's right there with me. I'm really scared... fucking petrified really... but I guess as long as I keep taking my meds and take it easy, I should be fine… and hopefully by the time anything happens to me, if anything does, it'll be far enough down the road that there will have been a few medical advances. There's one that's really experimental right now where they inject alcohol into the enlarged portion of the heart to kill off the excess cells... but yeah, I'm not going to go for anything like that until it has been perfected... *shudder*
*sigh*
Oh yeah... and the Toprol also makes me very very drowsy..of which I'm beginning to really feel the effects... I think that I'll end our little cardiology lesson there. ;)
(hehe, like my new picture of Sexual Harassment Panda?)