All expenses paid overnight stay at the luxury SAMMC!

Finally home from a somewhat scary but mostly annoying overnight stay at the hospital.  One of the potential side effects of the Herceptin is permanent heart damage, which, if not caught, could lead to congestive heart failure.  Given my family history of heart issues (even though the docs say I have the heart of an 18 year old) this was the one thing that really bothered me about starting this chemo regimen in the first place.  So, we've been pretty sensitive to looking for warning flags on that shore.

A few days after Triple-Cocktail #3, I had some heart flutters followed by wicked bad dizziness.  Docs did an EKG and ordered a bunch of tests for next week.  Well, yesterday, only about 24 hours after Triple-Cocktail #4, the same thing happened.  Doug insisted on bringing me to the ER.  The combination of having active heart palpitations, a bald head, and an "I'm a chemo patient" card got me moved right to the front of the line (well ahead of all the trainees complaining of sprained ankles and headaches).  By 3 pm, I had been all hooked up to wires, had another EKG, gave a few vials of blood, and seen no less than 3 different doctors, all of whom insisted that I be admitted at least overnight for observation.

So I spent the night in the hospital (no fancy city-view room this time), all hooked up to a constant heart electrofunctioning monitor, getting probed and prodded and measured every hour on the hour.  Of course, there weren't any more heart palpitations or dizziness, so nothing for them to catch with all their fancy monitoring equipment.  I bribed my way out of there this afternoon, promising to come back tomorrow for more fancy heart tests, and again on Wednesday to get fitted with another fancy heart monitor thingy.  Once again, I question the sanity in a treatment regimen that almost kills me in order to kill the thing that tried to kill me in the first place.