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Monday, June 05, 2006

MUGA

My fun for today is to have my once every 3-month MUGA scan. This is the event where I start out at the infusion room to get my port accessed. Then, tubes hanging, I traipse across the hospital campus and up the elevator to nuclear medicine where a tech draws some blood, puts in some radioactive stuff, processes it and then injects it back into me. Next, I lay down on a bed and a couple of camera/scan devices are moved close to me to record my heart beat for a short time, especially the left ventricle. The idea is to check the strength of the muscle by how well the left venticle is ejecting the blood moving through it. The resulting number is the LVEF - Left Ventricular Ejection Fraction. A number below 50 is definitely not good and will cause Herceptin infusions to be stopped. My LVEF got dangerously close after my Adriamycin/Cytoxin/Taxol chemotherapy when it hit 50. After 3 months, it recovered back to near its starting point - much to my relief.

Needless to say, this is yet one more test that will take up most of my day, leaving little time for anything else. Except for a few blood tests though, this should be the last major test I have before my reconstruction surgery.

15 days and counting. Can't believe how fast it is passing!

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