I think I cried all night after the echo cardiogram. My sister, the one in medical work, put me in touch with a friend of her’s that worked in hospice. I talked to the hospice nurse for something like 3 hours and cried all the time. I felt like my perfect little world was ending and everything was spinning out of my control. We had done so well for so long, how could God let this happen to us? Yeah, I blamed God, who doesn’t at a time like this! Later that night, Den and I talked about what we were going to do if tomorrow’s appointment went as we were expecting. We even went over his wishes for how he wanted to die…no machines, and updated his living will and power of attorney information. It was a very sobering night.
March 31, 2016
Today we went to Dr. Raj’s office. Now over the last few weeks, we knew Den was getting worse. The swelling in his legs was out of control and he had started to develop weeping sores that would not heal, his urine always had a very foul odor, he was not sleeping at night and his appetite was non existent. When we arrived, they took Den’s blood pressure in both arms. it was 90/70 in both….not good! Dr. Raj was obviously concerned when he came into the room. He went over the echo from the day before and yes Den’s EF was 13.4. Dr. Raj got very serious at this point. He told us that his bag of tricks was empty. He had no more options for us from his office. Of course, I began to cry all over again. He reassured us that there was more that could be done, he just was not the one to do it. He called a friend of his, Dr. Uriel, who is the head of the Advanced Heart Failure Clinic at the University of Chicago Hospitals. Dr Raj got us an appointment for April 5th and assured us that anything that could possibly be done to help Den, could be done by this group. The drive home was very quiet. I don’t think either of us spoke all the way home. We were afraid to break the silence because we were both very scared and bewildered with the news that Den’s heart was on the verge of failing all together.
Now we just had to wait the 4 days to see the new Cardiologist at the U of C. It would be the longest 4 days we could have imagined.
Den's LVAD 