cancer – day 35
The MUGA test was today. They want to make sure what condition my heart is in before chemo, and then they’re going to check this again half-way through and again at the end of chemo, before putting me back on my heart medication. First they drew two vials of blood (why the hell can’t they make vials in different sizes, instead of wiggling these damn needles in my arm to swap in additional vials?!), then left me sitting half an hour with a cath in my vein, while they mixed some radioactive stuff into my blood. Then they re-injected this radioactive blood back in my vein through the cath, and as I understand it the radioactive isotopes attach to red blood cells and pass through the heart in the circulation, so the isotopes can be traced as they move through the heart. They took two ten-minute sessions of recordings of that. Towards the end of the second one, I had a coughing fit because of my crummy cold, and they came in and said we’d have to do it over again. I was like, “ok, but can I please have a sip of water first?” I mean please, they were annoyed with me because I couldn’t not cough for twenty minutes when I’m sick? Actually, they were definitely busy, back-to-back scans all afternoon I guess. And the old guy before me didn’t want to go in, so he made us all late to begin with. Anyway. Basically this MUGA test is supposed to show how well blood is pumping through my heart. I don’t expect the test today to show anything abnormal at all. If it were necessary in terms of my heart, if my cardiologist thought I had a weak heart, he would have already ordered this test. But it if makes the medical oncologist happy so be it. What’s one more radioactive injection in the big scheme of things anyway?
The real reason they need the MUGA is because my cancer was HER2/NEU positive, which means it is an aggressive cancer, and they will want to include another drug in my chemo called Herceptin, if my heart is strong enough and stays strong enough. So Herceptin, as I understand it, is hard on the heart, and they can’t administer it if your MUGA falls below a certain percentage or score. So while I expect today’s MUGA to be fine, I suspect if they give me Herceptin, it’s going to fall. Of course, everything else I read about Herceptin and what it does to the female body is pretty hellish, so let’s just not go there yet. Better to just deal with the drug-induced menopause and ovary damage when it happens, instead of worrying about it now.
Surely at some point the potential damage to my heart isn’t worth the incremental improvement in the cancer prognosis? When do they take quality of life into consideration? Or don’t they? Am I the only one in this medical process concerned about my quality of life regardless of it’s duration?