aaah so finals are over and now what...

Took my last final EVER today and passed! so the theory part of the program is pretty much done. All my classmates get to walk in graduation on Sunday- I'm really happy for all of them because of all the crap we've all put up with in the program- yet I don't think I can go to the ceremony. I'm still a little bitter that everything is taking sooo much longer for me- I don't get to walk until next years graduation- although I am scheduled to be done a quarter before that. I think it may be for the better in some sense, because I can ease my way back into clinical and will have nothing else to distract me. Clinical is what it's all about anyways. Seeing patents, diagnosing, etc... All that obviously needs some work, although I am getting first hand experiences all along the way.

For the past few weeks I have been noticing that I am having a lot of trouble climbing the hill from the beach and park to our house. It's not that steep, and takes about 1o min normally to walk home. Lately, however, i have had to stop walking five or six times to either catch my breath or because my legs were hurting. At the same time, I was having those palpitations that I talked about in the last blog. Well, today I had an appointment with my Primary Care PA for medication refills and so I mentioned this to her. She listened to my heart and verified that I had a harsh murmur on the left sternal border. (For all of you nursing crew- what's the differential?).

I have always had a hard time hearing murmurs- mainly because I have never really heard one, and secondly because of some post-infective hearing loss. I could barely hear it, but I knew that something was going on... The chemo nurses has asked me lots of questions about my palpitations but no one other than me had ever listened to my heart. In any case, she scheduled me for a cardiac echo- one more diagnostic test that I will learn about first hand to add to all the knowledge I've picked up this year so far. Basically this test is an ultrasound of the heart to look at its structure, blood flow, valves, etc.

So what could be going on with me could be three possibilities: 1.) I'm so anemic that my heart is working too hard to oxygenate my body. 2.) The paclitaxel or carboplatin chemotherapy drugs have cardiotoxic effects and may have damaged my valves. or 3.) I have bacterial endocardititis, an infection in my heart from my port-a-cath line.

I'm hoping for the anemia cause I know that already. I just have to wait and see if anything gets worse before Wednesday when I have my echo. Then, Thursday I have the big CT scan. Lots to look forward to (and lots of reasons for anxiety)!