1. Side effects? What side effects? Me no have got sidefects!
First, to prosaic matters, such as the giant invasive fungal infection in my head, and the unpleasant side effects of the drug used to treat it.
My life has fallen into a strange routine. I get up each morning wondering which kind of day I will have. On some days, I feel really terrible. I am cold, stupid, dizzy, tired, and overly emotional. Even a deodorant commercial might make me cry. On other days, like today, I feel almost normal. But to be safe, even on the good days, I'm not driving, calculating Pi out to 100 digits, or practicing my new trapeze act.
If I have a long string of consistently normal days, maybe it might be safe for me to try to go back to work sometime in the not-too-distant future. I really hope so. I miss my patients.
Now on to the weird stuff.
2. Like the beat beat ------ beat of the Tom Tom...
Sometimes, especially when I lie down at night, I hear the rhythmic whooshing of my blood.* A few days ago, though, I began to notice some skipped beats. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh ------- whoosh, whoosh ------ whoosh. I checked my pulse and it had the same irregularity. We were staying with my parents on Cape Hagfish, and they detected it too. It was an arrhythmia. That can be nothing to worry about, or it could be a sign of something very bad. Worrying about this kept me up at night.
So when we came back home the next day, I got an appointment at the local hospital for an EKG in the cardiology department. In the waiting room, I noticed the arrhythmia was gone. Damn. I got several EKGs and it just wasn't there. But, but, but! I felt like Big Bird trying to persuade everyone that Mr. Snuffleupagus had just been here but left before they could see him.**
It turns out that the afternoon was not the best time to catch it. But with his usual excellent timing, Snuffy showed up again after midnight.
Like the superhero she is, K/BWE leapt out of bed quicker than the human eye, ready to save the day! In seconds, we were in the emergency room. This time, they did find it on EKG: Beep ------ beep, beep.*** It was premature atrial contractions (PAC's)--generally pretty harmless, and maybe completely so.****
One of my medical mottos is "when in doubt, blame the drug."***** I was taking meloxicam for my headaches, a long-acting drug related to ibuprofen and naproxen. I did a little research, and, very rarely, meloxicam may cause PAC's. I gambled that the meloxicam was unnecessary, since my headaches had been almost all better after the recent botox injection in my jaw muscles. So I stopped taking it. Bingo. No more PAC's, and headache is still practically gone.
After all my crazy health history, this was my first cardiac issue! I hear they are turning it into a cool new kid's toy: My First Arrhythmia, by Kenner.
And for my next trick: my first pulmonary issue!
3. Stupid PET tricks
I had my PET scan last week.******
The good news is, desperate as they were, the Oncology Team could not find cancer. Yay!!!
But there is some unexplained inflammatory weirdness in my lungs. Boooo!!!
No one has yet suggested any explanation beyond "inflammatory," which is a description, not a diagnosis. And I don't see any articles about this being associated with any of my meds. What the truck???
Oh well, time for a lung specialist. Just what I wanted, another doctor on my case! Oy.
Stay tuned!
Tom
*I have had several patients complain of similar symptoms. It's not a big deal. It can even be fun. You can dance to it. (You can, not me - dancing really isn't my thing.)
**The old Sesame Street had an edge. At some point, someone decided that it was unhealthy to try to make kids with invisible friends feel normal, so Snuffleupagas became visible to everyone. Feh.
I, on the other hand, had invisible enemies. Still do.
***Like road runner with a traumatic brain injury.
****PAC: Unless you're a lizard, your heart is made up of four chambers called Larry, Moe, Curly, and Shemp. Not really. They are called the left and right atria (plural of atrium) above and the left and right ventricles below.
The normal heartbeat is started by a signal from the sinoatrial node--a gang of cells that hang out in the wall of the right atrium--that travels to the rest of the heart, causing it to beat. A premature atrial contraction is set off when some other idiotic cell or group of cells decide they want to send off their own signal. That causes a premature atrial contraction. Sends the whole thing out of whack for a beat.
The evidence we have so far shows no excess risk from these. Treatment with a medication is a matter of taste. But there is speculation that they may carry a tiny risk of stroke. How nice.
***** You should talk to your doctor before drawing such a conclusion, of course. But it is always worth asking if one of your medications could be causing a symptom.
******Willow and Katie stared at me so intently! Not really. In a PET (Positron Emission Tomography, of course!) scan, you fast overnight. Then in the morning, they inject you with radioactive sugar, and you become the Incredible Hulk. Meanwhile, greedy spots in the body, such as cancerous tumors and inflamed areas, eat up a lot of the sugar, so they glow when you got through a CT scan (a souped up X-ray), showing the docs where they are.
***Like road runner with a traumatic brain injury.
****PAC: Unless you're a lizard, your heart is made up of four chambers called Larry, Moe, Curly, and Shemp. Not really. They are called the left and right atria (plural of atrium) above and the left and right ventricles below.
The normal heartbeat is started by a signal from the sinoatrial node--a gang of cells that hang out in the wall of the right atrium--that travels to the rest of the heart, causing it to beat. A premature atrial contraction is set off when some other idiotic cell or group of cells decide they want to send off their own signal. That causes a premature atrial contraction. Sends the whole thing out of whack for a beat.
The evidence we have so far shows no excess risk from these. Treatment with a medication is a matter of taste. But there is speculation that they may carry a tiny risk of stroke. How nice.
***** You should talk to your doctor before drawing such a conclusion, of course. But it is always worth asking if one of your medications could be causing a symptom.
******Willow and Katie stared at me so intently! Not really. In a PET (Positron Emission Tomography, of course!) scan, you fast overnight. Then in the morning, they inject you with radioactive sugar, and you become the Incredible Hulk. Meanwhile, greedy spots in the body, such as cancerous tumors and inflamed areas, eat up a lot of the sugar, so they glow when you got through a CT scan (a souped up X-ray), showing the docs where they are.
* * *
Preparing for PET Scan
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