Saturday, May 03, 2008
Echocardiogram
On Thursday I went to UCSD/Thornton Hospital in La Jolla for my echocardiogram. I was a little nervous, eventhough I felt it would turn out well. Since Duchenne Muscular Dytrophy affects the heart, you never know what may pop up. The echocardiogram went well, eventhough a medical student did the procedure. She was surpervized, so she did it correctly. My heart turned out to be in pretty good shape. It was beating well and my ejection fraction, the percentage of blood pumped from the heart chambers (ventricles), was over sixty percent. That is very good. The doctor will go over the results. He will contact me if there is anything of concern. But, I don't think he will. It gives me piece of mind to know that my ticker is still in good shape.
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John,
Congrats on the great EF! That's about "normal" range. I find it funny that I'm congratulating someone on the function of their heart, but for your age and having DMD that's AWESOME!
When Eric died his EF was around 15-18%. At CHOP they don't go by the EF, they use the shortening factor. Problem was all the literature online talked about EF. So at the appointment before he died he was persistant about the DR calculating the EF. I remember that day was so disappointing and disheartening. We knew Eric's heart wasn't in the best shape, but were hoping for the 20's. I'm glad we found out tho. I don't think Eric and I would have been so prepared for his death, well as prepared as you can be. We always treated every good bye like it was the last, but after that they became more meaningful.
Sorry for writing such a book. I'm never 1 to be concise.
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