It is NOT All In My Head!

Found it!

The trip to the heart catheterization lab was scheduled for October 19th on the preceding Monday the 12th. Now I know that compared to others whom have had to wait years to get some doctor, any doctor, to take them seriously I have nothing to complain about – and I am not complaining. But, that was still a very long week. I had never had any surgical procedure that was as serious as this and I spent the week doing what any good nerd would do in 2015. I curled up after work with my trusty iPad and señor Google.

I learned what the goals of the procedure were and was really happy to learn that if they discovered a plaque (which at that moment was the leading candidate for causing my problem) that they could treat it right then and there with a coronary artery stent. Not something you want to have happen to you at 46 but in the grand scheme of things it would have been okay. Señor convinced me that stents were pretty safe and if you took your meds like you were supposed to they came with really good outcomes.

Honestly, by now I was just ready to find something...anything to point to what was going on. I was not having episodes like Sedona but after that first episode I had was really tired – all the time. Even if I got a full nights sleep I still really needed a nap in the afternoon in order not to be a total zombie in the evening. And, there is nothing like the glint in the eyes of adolescents the moment they sense weakness, when you are on your own, to strike fear into a man's soul.

Moreover, now that I was paying really keen attention to it, my "sports injury" was bugging me two or three times a week. So I entered the cath - lab totally ready to accept that I had coronary artery disease and would need a stent.

Stanford Catheterization Lab #3

Arriving at the hospital on the 19th I was pretty psyched because I had been told that I had large veins and that meant they could go in through my wrist which was simpler, less embarrassing, and had a faster recovery time after the procedure. So I was a bit bummed when they still prepped all of the access options even though they planned on using only my arm. Oh well. After getting ready for bikini season plus my IV I was all set to go. They wheeled me into a room which resembled, and was as warm as, a large meat locker. But, had been turned into some really cool geek cave with lots of monitors and a big scanning machine positioned over a table.

I hopped up on the table and started shivering it was so cold. Fortunately a second later the nurse showed up with something like a porous air mattress that hooked up to a hot air supply plus a blanket. So once tucked into that I was completely comfortable and happy. (Honestly, they put a little something in the IV too - but I am going to take the credit for being "chill" on my own anyway.)

The cardiologist prepped the access site and the nurse moved a monitor so that I could see the feed from the scanner too. Once the doctor was all set he asked if I was ready for the dye to be injected and as soon as I said yep – we were off.

Not five seconds after the dye was inserted the cardiologist quite clearly and loudly said "you have a bridge." This was the very first time that I heard the word bridge so I did not know what it meant. But, I could see the feed of the scan on my monitor and saw something that resembled the video at the left.

This is not my scan. But, it does show a bridge. As I learned later, you can sometimes see the "milking" effect (in the video notice that after the dye is injected it is squeezed or "milked" out of the area that the video focuses on) of a bridge on the Angiogram. Although, this is not always the case because Angiograms are the lowest resolution of all the tests so it takes a severe bridge to show up. (Mine showed up just fine…uh…yay.)

At this point the doctor started looking around my heart so to speak. The monitor changed to different perspectives and there were a couple of more "shots" of dye looking at blood flow in the different arteries of my heart. After another 2 to 5 mins he remarked "there is another one." And, sure enough I saw the same milking pattern show up again on what was clearly a different artery.

At this point he stopped and a whole bunch of conversation started somewhere outside of my field of vision. The nurse came over and said that the doctors were discussing what they have found and deciding on what to do next. This went on for not more than 5 mins or so. At which point the cardiologist came over to me and said that he was done, things were fine, but he wanted to talk to some more of his colleagues.

And, with that, I was disconnected from everything and wheeled into recovery.

I was actually pretty happy at this point. They had found something. I had no idea what a myocardial bridge (the nurses gave me the full name) was or why it would be causing me issues but at least they found something. Unfortunately, they did not "do" anything about it so I still had whatever was wrong, wrong. But, I had proof I was not crazy – or at least I was not crazier than I had been before Sedona anyway.

This was progress and by now I was all about progress.

So after hanging in recovery for a little over an hour and a half (much better than the 4 - 6 hours the other approach requires) I was on my way home with an appointment to follow up with the original cardiologist that prescribed the catheterization.

Most importantly to me at the time: I knew something I did not going in. I had not one, but two Myocardial Bridges, and my iPhone, señor Google, and I were already busy diving into what in the hell those were.