When I
got home from the rehab class yesterday afternoon, there was a message on the
machine from Dr. K. She told me she was sending the report from yesterday’s
test for pulmonary hypertension and she had some comments. I also loved that at
the end of the phone message, she told me to call her if I wanted to talk about
it. I pulled up the e-mail and here was the message:
“This is the final line from your ECHO report: Compared to the
previous study on 11/6/2006, the PASP is increased to 34mmHg in this study. As
the point of reference, the pulmonary artery systolic pressure (PASP) was 19 in
2006.
So this value of pulmonary artery systolic pressure 34 is not in
the range that requires treatment but it does make me wonder if we are using
oxygen to its best advantage in all the situations so;
I am going to ask my staff to set up an overnight oximetry on
your usual 2 L per minute of nighttime oxygen just to be sure that you are
consistently above 92%.
You might consider being more liberal about your use of oxygen
when you are active again so that your oxygen saturation is 92%. I know you do many things without
oxygen support but it might be a good time to reconsider this.
Please let me know if you need to discuss this.”
Not the best of news. Not bad enough to study further but it would
explain why I have been so fatigued lately. I may not be getting enough oxygen
at night and frankly, nor am I probably staying above 92 percent during some of
my activities like rolling my bass in and out of rehearsals and concerts. I now
must commit to wearing my oxygen more often. I must remind myself to check
the saturation monitor more often as well.
It will
be interesting to see what the oximetry study reports.
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