Well, we had an unexpected turn of events today. We caught the first flight to Trondheim this morning and met with a cardiologist intern at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital to talk about the angiogram tomorrow. (Double click on the photo to see the heart of downtown Trondheim and the historic Nidarosdomen Church.) The intern looked at Kory’s test results, talked to us for over an hour about the pros and cons of stenting, and answered our thousand and one questions. The bottom line is there are no guarantees, either way we go. What he said was, if the cardio doc goes in there tomorrow to look around with the angiogram camera and then finds a problem, he will fix it with a stent or schedule a recommended by-pass, if needed. Of course, he said, Kory has a choice as to whether he wants a stent or not, but if he is not 100% sure he wants one, they just won’t even bother to do the angiogram. This is the other side of the coin in socialized health care. They are trying to save money and they don’t want to do a procedure twice. The intern said it’s no problem to go home and think about it and come back in a few weeks and have it done, but they will not just go in and take a look around just to find out WHERE the problem is – they want to fix it. He was pretty sure, from all the test results Kory has, there IS a problem, so it’s not a question of IF he has a problem, it’s a question of how BAD the problem is. But the problem for us is, until we know where the blockage is or how bad it is, we don’t want to make a decision. Also, we wouldn’t get a say as to whether they use a medicated stent or not. There are a ton of lawsuits in America now because the medicated stent is causing a lot of deaths from side-effects. The intern said they are using medicated stents half the time and half the time using bare metal stents, and then they are studying which one has the better results. That didn’t set too well with Kory since it obviously sounds like they know there are problems…. So Kory wouldn’t say for SURE that he would agree to a stent even if they said he needed one - so they just sent us home. All I can say is HALLELUJAH!The intern did suggest another test for Kory to take in Ålesund that puts his heart in some kind of super stress mode to see how it will hold up, but I haven’t researched it and it sounds dangerous so I’m not sure we’ll go that way. But the bottom line is, we prayed about the angiogram, and I believe God answered. I so didn’t want Kory to have anything invasive done as there is a chance plaque could break loose during the procedure and cause a heart attack right then and there, but I really just put it in God’s hands and let Him decide for us. Only God knows the future and any possible complications and I just trust Him – so I’m thankful for the outcome and that they did nothing. Kory is also not thrilled about having to be on prescription drugs the rest of his life if he got a stent, so this is another good reason to NOT do it. (He has always had bad reactions to any drugs he takes, so he worries his quality of life will diminish if he’s on drugs that don’t work well for him, and then he won’t be able to go off them.)
Kory asked the intern WHY he would recommend a stent when he has been doing fine for the last four years and he feels just fine now. Kory has had no side effects to deal with from anything – the only thing is that when he exercises he gets the angina pain in his arm and when he slows down it goes away. The intern said that the stent would eliminate the angina and it MAY reduce the risk of a heart attack, but there are so many factors in why one has a heart attack in the first place that there are just no guarantees. So all a stent would do is eliminate the symptom, but not solve the problem. Now if Kory were in constant pain, or his quality of life were diminished in some way or he had a heart attack, it would be a different story, but Kory feels like he can go on the way he has been going for the last four years, just fine – why rock the boat? The intern understood perfectly, although he was a bit concerned that Kory’s angina comes on easier now than it did before we moved here, but that’s because Kory hasn’t been exercising and possibly because he hasn’t been doing Chelation Therapy or been as careful on his diet. Who knows. Kory is motivated to start exercising again though. If there is a blockage, exercise creates collateral circulation (new pathways develop) that bring blood into the heart. I read once they discovered in an autopsy done on one of the astronauts that died on the launching pad back in the 1960s that he was 100% blocked in all four of his main heart arteries but because he was in top physical form, his body had created all kinds of collateral circulation, so having a blockage isn’t necessarily a death sentence.
We were home by dinnertime. Kaleb was a little disappointed he didn’t have more time away from us, but Turid said he was a very good kid, so that was nice to hear. But poor Odd, he was so disappointed in the final outcome. Hopefully he can be released now from the feeling that he must do something to save Kory’s life. We’re still trusting God for that one.
