TGIF

It's finally Friday! The day started with breakfast here at the Stanford Guest House. I finally got to eat breakfast before my tests. We then went over to the ECG lab for an Echocardiogram to evaluate the "anomaly" near my pulmonic valve. This was the easiest test by far, no needles sticks or radiation.

My next appointment was my first with the cardiologist at Stanford, Dr. Vagelos. Even though my appointment started late, he was the first doctor that I've met with that spent at least an hour going through my history and prognosis with me. The news from Dr. Vagelos was very good to hear. Based on the MRA of my chest and the Echocardiogram, nothing has changed with size of my aneurysm and the benign growth near my pulmonic valve. He did say that there is a link between Moyamoya and aneurysms. Based on no changes within the last six months, Dr. Vagelos felt that I should follow up with an MRA in a year. The growth near my pulmonic valve, was something he thought could have been there for a long time and posed no threat to my overall health. Whew!! I call this good news.

There wasn't much time to let the news sink in, we had to rush over to the MRI lab, offsite from the hospital for my cerebral MRI with and w/o contrast. As I was called into get set up in the machine, the lab tech questioned the type of aneurysm clips I had. I had no clue. The techs were very concerned with the material of the clips, since the MRI equipment at this site were much more powerful than those in the hospital. Since they couldn't figure out what I had, the tech rescheduled my test at the hospital.

We rushed back to the hospital for the MRI. With the contrast, the test required an IV...just one stick for today. The test went smoothly, but it did push out my Brain Spect scan by an hour. So right after the MRI, I went straight to the Brain Spect scan area. I hate this test. Another round of laying in the dark for 15 minutes, getting a radioactive tracer injected, then laying down for another 30 minutes. The scan itself took about 25 minutes of laying completely still.

What a relief when the Brain Spect test ended. I'm done for the week. We have the weekend off and are considering taking a drive over to wine country.