Day Three Evaluation - Original Date Feb 16th, 2007

I had to get up at 5am again Friday morning. We had to leave the house at about 7am to make it across town to my first appointment at 8am.

8:00am - Allergy Anergy/PPD w/Control Skin Test Reading:

This was a brief appointment that was simply meant to read the results of my PPD test from Wednesday. Remember the test I mentioned that tested to see if I had been exposed to TB. I have NOT been exposed to TB and YES my immune system responded.

11:00am - Heart and Lung Financial Advisor:

This was pretty simple we met with a financial advisor to discuss my insurance situation and fundraising. This lasted about 30 minutes and we were done.

11:30am - Lab Non-Fasting Blood Visit:

This was simple. They drew ONE vial of blood. I asked what the blood draw was for and was told that it was for some form of typing.

1:00pm - Radiology Nuclear Medicine V/Q Injection + Scan (Ventilation/Perfusion Injection + Scan):

I thought this test would be one of the hardest tests I had to go through and it was relatively simple to be honest. This test is to measure the way that air flows through your lungs and also the way that blood flows through your lungs. They are hoping to determine if one of your lungs is more damaged than the other and which one it is.

Procedure wise they had me lay on my back - they gave me pillows to elevate my head a bit so I could breathe a little easier. Then they center cameras above and below your chest to take pictures. There are NO xrays - the cameras they use are specially made to only identify the radioactive materials so xrays are not needed. Once you are lying on your back and they have the cameras ready they give you a mask. You have to put the mask over your mouth and nose. They have you take a few breathes and then they inject Xenon into the mask and you have to inhale it and hold your breathe a little and do that again. The Xenon did not taste or smell or make me feel any different than usual. I laid there with the mask over my mouth and nose for about probably 7 or 8 minutes maybe 10 I cannot recall. All the while they were taking pictures of the way the gas was taken into my lungs and how it was dispersed out of my lungs. The way the pictures looked it showed up as reddish on the camera - reddish where the gas was and darker to black where the gas was NOT. After the gas portion of the test I was able to take the mask off. Then the tech rearranged the cameras for the next test.

The next part of the test was the injection portion. They injected a protein combination of sorts into your blood stream. This also showed up only on the cameras that they were using. It showed the way that blood flowed through the lungs. She had to take 4 sets of pictures for this portion of the test. One portion was front and back pictures, then right front and left back, left side and right side AND left front and right back. It showed all of the lobes from different angles. This was the same premise as the first set of pictures the brighter areas (which in this scan appeared to be bright WHITE) were where the blood was flowing and the dark areas were the more damaged parts. For mine I found it very interesting because she said that a NORMAL person’s scan would be more defined outer edges of the lungs whereas mine were somewhat "fuzzy" and undefined. Also with the gas portion of the test the upper left lobes of my lungs appeared black - indicating that little or no gas got to that area and it was severely damaged. The same showed up on the blood test portion of the scan there was bright white everywhere except the upper left lobe of my lungs it was predominantly black.

2:00pm Gynocology Consultation (Medical):

Just a basic gynecology appointment. Nothing spectacular and I get the results in a few weeks.