Dave and I went to see his cardiologist, Paul Huang, on March 1st. On intake, the nurse took Dave’s blood pressure from both arms. The results were 140\/75 on left arm and 130\/80 on right arm, with some evidence of an irregular beat. Dave reported to Dr. Huang that his PVCs have stopped and said that while the 12-lead EKG did indeed show irregularities when he got his seed implants on 1\/28, the report was still better than the one from the 12-lead EKG he got a year ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr. Huang said that Dave’s irregular EKG was likely because of asymmetric thickening in his heart muscle, with some parts of the heart muscle not working as well, i.e. non-uniform contraction. He said the most likely explanation for the thickening is hypertension. It’s also possible that there are some blockages in the cardiac arteries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr. Huang ordered a nuclear stress test to test the blockage hypothesis. The test involves injecting a radioisotope and doing real time analysis of blood flow while Dave is exerting himself on a treadmill. This is then compared with blood flow while sedentary. Dr. Huang also wanted a lipid panel, so that was added to Dave’s next set of labs, scheduled for 4\/16. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sleep apnea could also explain some of the abnormalities. Dave had a sleep study recently, which detected some evidence of sleep apnea, but final results are not available yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In any case, Dr. Huang cleared Dave for strenuous exercise, including uphill\/aerobic walking. He just said to be mindful of breathing and sensations in the chest, and to stop and take a break if it gets too uncomfortable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fast forward to Saturday, 3\/13: Dave ended up going to the ER with a urinary obstruction, which his past reading had indicated might be a potential complication of the seed implants. After they explanted some blood clots, he was sent home with a catheter. He doesn’t yet know if it will interfere with his radiation treatments, which are scheduled to begin later this week. Either way, it is certainly uncomfortable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dave and I went to see his cardiologist, Paul Huang, on March 1st. On intake, the nurse took Dave’s blood pressure from both arms. The results were 140\/75 on left arm and 130\/80 on right arm, with some evidence of an irregular beat. Dave reported to Dr. Huang that his PVCs have stopped and said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dkbnet.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dkbnet.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dkbnet.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dkbnet.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dkbnet.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dkbnet.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":121,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dkbnet.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions\/121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dkbnet.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dkbnet.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dkbnet.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}