Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Everything Will Be All Right. Right?

Mr. WG has a small hole in his heart. There’s a joke there somewhere, about how all the love falls out or about how I put the hole there, but I can’t figure it out.

Anyway, Mr. WG has a small hole in his heart, more commonly known as a heart murmur. He was born with it, and his whole life it’s been one of those things that’s noted in his records, and not much else.

He saw the internist a few weeks back for a cold he couldn’t shake, and the internist asked about the echo Mr. WG was supposed to do two years ago.

“I did it. Check your files,” said Mr. WG, and there it was.

“Yeah, some of these numbers are a little off. Let’s do a repeat echo,” said the doctor.

So he did. And the numbers are still a little off, so he’s going in to the cardiologist on Monday. Basically, it’s his PA (pulmonary artery) systolic that’s a bit high, which could indicate pulmonary hypertension. So I called my dad to ask if I should be bumping up Mr. WG’s life insurance and creating my profile over at JDate.

Good ol’ Dad responded by telling me a story of a medical school classmate of his who was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension back in the day. They did open heart surgery on him, and one of the blood transfusions gave him Hepatitis B. Then he needed a liver transplant, and he wound up getting cancer, and then he died.

What a GREAT story!

So.

We will be carrying on as usual over here. Mr. WG will continue working too hard and rolling his eyes at me, and I will continue wringing my hands in despair and dabbing at my eyes with my white lace handkerchief. And on Monday, we’ll all have a good laugh at this.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good heavens. Good ol' Dad seems to be one of those doctor types who is so afraid of being optimistic about anything that he starts with the worst case and goes downhill from there. Oy.

Hang in there! I imagine it will be a stressful weekend, but hang in and I hope all goes well on Monday. You'll be in my thoughts.

Anonymous said...

WG - glad to hear the great news of D's language - truly awesome! And my hubby too had a murmur diagnosed some 4-5 years ago...now you got me thinking...we should have it checked again - hm? Stay positive - you're a TERRIFIC wife and superb mom!
Fellow sotos mom,
Natalie

moplans said...

I can't believe your dad did that to you.

My geneticist is exactly like your dad. I feel for his kids.