Thanks, Gav.
What a day! We left early for Kiev to make a 9:00 appointment with a cardiologist. Gav again took us in his little Kangoo – one of the last trips we’ll do together before he leaves Ukraine.
The Dr. did a cardiogram which came back clear. He said that I really should drink more water – nothing Priscilla hasn’t mentioned many a time. : )
Then we did a Doppler neck ultrasound. Clear, except for some arrhythmic heart beats (I think that means heartbeats that are out of sync), which we should look into later. This test took ages. I’m used to ultrasounds for pregnancies being 10 minutes or so. This seemed to take about 30. It took so long, I was getting sure that he’d found something to bother him. Not so. At least, it didn’t bother him much.
Next, we drove across the city and had an appointment with another doctor for an echocardiogram. Clear; but she also noted an arrhythmic heart beat and some valve thingy. Nothing critical though. This doctor did the test unofficially and it was expected that we give her some money as a thank-you. We did gratefully. (To read more, click on the heading.)
Then we went to another place and got an MRI on my neck and a MRI angiography on my head. I don’t really know the difference. I just know that the angiography took 20 minutes longer than a normal MRI. Oh! This time, they gave me ear muffs which made a big difference. I could hear my heart beating loudly, but the racket of the scanner was muffled… Either the bloke doing it the other day was a sadist, or he forgot. He deserves to be hit over the head 1000 times with a… notepad. Today 30 minutes passed decently quickly where I could actually hear myself think… and talk to God, in that plastic tunnel.
Then we quickly drove over to see the neurosurgeon. His opinion after looking at the reports was that there was nothing that would have caused a stroke, except possibly something which showed on the MRI’s - two ischemic lesions (one in the brain stem, which he said was extremely unusual and was probably a malformation of blood vessels) and the other… somewhere else. :) He said that we will need to do some more tests, but that he wanted to show the MRI’s to another doctor at the Institute of Neurosurgery for his opinion first. So Friday, we have an appointment with him.
All in all, it was a great day… and a great day for a birthday. Happy birthday, Priscilla.
In the meantime, I rest… and ponder the question of which is more important – the brain or the heart? I think the brain wins.
