What a summer...

I think this has been the most grueling eight months of my life. But it doesn't matter as it came with a happy ending. My wife had a right side heart cath last week and they officially told us that she was misdiagnosed. Obviously, I do have some mixed feelings about that but it would be a whole separate post.

Her pressures are normal and that means no pulmonary hypertension. Her new cardiologist went back and looked at all of the pieces in this long event....all of the echocardiograms, lung scans, exam reports, CICU histories, x-rays, etc. and is certain that she had a massive pulmonary embolism. He called it a "shower" embolism. Apparently, a large clot can sometimes break apart into many small clots and become lodged in the avioli capillaries in the lungs preventing the exchange of oxygen to a large portion of the lung. The fact that she survived, in large part, was the cause of the mis diagnosis. This is usually a fatal event so the assumption based on the remaining data was that she had PPH.

The greatest news is that she is well on her way to being well and this whole long event should not have any real impact on her life. The "damage" to her heart that they were seeing on the first echo they performed was actually an effect created by the very high pressure being created by the emboli. The new cardiologist does not feel that there is any permanent damage. So, great news all around.

Now I have to figure out how to let go of my fear of losing her. If she is in another room and gets quite, I almost have a panic attack. If I hear a noise that sounds like unusual breathing, same effect. The other night, my Dachshund was trying to hork something up and I almost broke my leg getting down the hall because I thought it was Lisa having difficulty breathing. I don't think I will ever forget seeing and hearing her like that last May.