I'll Remember April (Or Maybe May)

I wasn't going to do this but I felt I should.

A couple of weeks ago I went to Glasgow to have tests done for my annual check-up. Usually what happens is that I go through for my tests and stay overnight in the hotel when I'd see the consultant the next day to talk about what they show and where we go from there. However, the man who usually pulls all the result together so quickly has left the hospital so this time I had to go in for different appointments a few weeks apart.

So, the first appointment consisted of a full heart MRI which took roughly two hours. After that I had a fitness test on an exercise bike and to pull it all together I had an ECHO, which is the test using ultra-sound like with a pregnancy.

On Saturday I went back through to Glasgow and saw my consultant, Nikki Walker. It turns out that the future is not as bright as I thought it would be. Or, possibly, as long. The consultant pretty much said that the surgery I described last time wasn't going to be an option due to the amount of calcification inside so what they were going to have to do was a patch-up job until technology and medicine catches up to us. Bare with me here, I have trouble getting it myself...

What they wanted to do last time was to take out the artery part that housed the afflicted valve and replace it, putting a new valve inside it. But, as I said, there was too much calcification to do that and they can't follow the artery too close to the lungs because what we know now, in medicine, does not allow it. So, the only option we're stuck with now is cutting directly into the heart and using a wire to place a stent into the valve.

Remember that a stent is the small piece of wire meshing that looks like a finger trapper that is then stretched open by a small balloon device right to the walls of the atery to hold it open and to house the valve.

A stent would be placed in the valve area to push the calcified valve out of the way and then another stent would be inserted in the first stent which would house the valve. With anyone else the stent would be stretched to the walls of the artery and a risk would be that the artery would tear and the person would bleed to death since it is almost impossible to stop this bleed. However, purely in my case (what luck), the calcification is such that I explained it before as being as solid as porcelain and I was not kidding, and therefore the rest is that it may crack and bleed and we can't use Ronseal here.

So, the risk of death goes from 2-3% up to 8% in this case. As I said to my mum, you might think 'well that's a 92% chance of surviving, that's good!' and I can understand that but for me I don't pay attention to numbers. I read recently that scientists have estimated that the chances that you (yes you) were born was one in four hundred trillion - the 'you' being emphasised because the baby that was born could have been someone else but it wasn't, it was you. So every single person on this planet is a long shot. If you read this then you've probably read my story and then you'll know that, if I were to pay attention to numbers, I shouldn't be here at all. I am one very, very, very long shot. Therefore 2-3 or 8% means nothing to me, it may as well be 50/50 as far as I'm concerned.

One more thing I go on is people and Nikki has always been a positive, smiling person who looks like she's ready to tell you a joke then jump into a fight for you and I suppose that's because she is. Yet, on Saturday she didn't look in the fighting or joking mood. She looked hopeless and unhappy about it. When we told her about what happened with the fundraiser and the money for Venice she almost jumped on it and I didn't take that as a good sign. 

She said that when it comes to these things she's not just going to decide for me, they have to take into consideration if things have changed and how I feel. As ever, I'm not bothered I'm ready to jump on board but when they need me to. I'm with Nikki here, nothing is getting done until it is needed. So, I asked her, take me out of the equation, if you just looked at the tests what would you say? And she said she would be started to plan the operation and Nikki does not say these things lightly. She advised that we should go to Venice and then come back and have the operation.

So, to file it to the bone - In around six months I will undergo this operation; the operation might kill me but might not; if the operation doesn't the valves last anywhere from two to ten years (however the one I still have from being a baby is twenty years old); this operation can only be done up to three times before I'm pretty much fucked if medicine does not advance and find a way to let me keep going. In any other case Nikki would take out the stents and possibly replace the artery or just start again however because of the calcification in my artery she can't do this.

If you think I'm being over dramatic here, ask your local doc or cardiologists - patients with pulmonary artery problems do not live long because there is just not the medicine to help. 

Side Bar - when I say 'medicine' here I don't mean tablets or the like, I mean the field.

So it looks like we will see Nikki again in about three months for another check up and might be going to Venice, since everyone keeps asking, around April or May.

And I'm telling you all of this because, as much as my mum or sister may not want to hear it, I'm quite blunt when it comes to the truth so I just want to say another thank you for making this happen because it's one of the very few dreams in my life and there's an 8% chance it might be the last thing I ever do.

Whatever happens, folks, remember this...