The Magic Potion and Miracle Number Next

He doesn't like them.
MRI's.
He didn't know he didn't like them until last month when, after over an hour of being enclosed in the noisy, suffocating tube, he began to feel a little uncomfortable, which feeling quickly escalated into being a lot uncomfortable.
"Ummm... Are you guys almost done?" he called into the plastic just inches from his nose.  "I'm starting to feel really stuffy."  But they weren't done yet... they still had to do measurements of his aorta which would take another twenty minutes.  He tried to concentrate on the music he had playing through the headphones, but the heavy blanket covering him started feeling itchy.  And the sweat seeping from him felt damp.  And then his nose was itchy, too.
After a lifetime that lasted a few minutes he called again, "Ummm... How much longer?  I think I could be okay if we could just stop for a minute to take the blanket off."  But this time they were almost done and told him to hang on for just a couple more minutes. 
He wasted no time in sitting up and shaking the muscles in his arms and legs when they finally removed him from the tube.  And he had a new appreciation for all the patients he'd been frustrated by for declining MRI's themselves.  "I definitely get why some people refuse them now," he told me later that day.  "I can see how you could just kind of lose your mind and start panicking in there."

So he was anxious and quietly unhappy when the doctor suggested another MRI at his first follow-up appointment a month later.  "There's a little, something, down at the apex of your heart," she explained after reviewing the echo they had just done.  "I think it's probably nothing, probably just a trabecluation (a bit of spongy tissue that is not uncommon in small amounts she kindly explained to me), but," she continued, "I had the other doctors take a look and we're just not sure.  It could be a clot.  Again, we don't think it is," she added quickly, "but it could be."  Thinking that there might be a clot at the bottom of Brian's heart gave me pause.  If a clot is pumped through the body it could result in a stroke or worse.  She pulled his echo up on her computer screen and showed us the area she was talking about.  Yep.  I could definitely see a something where she pointed.  But I could see several somethings all over the screen and was grateful that she knew what somethings were normal and what somethings needed a closer look.  "So we'd like to get a better look with an MRI if that's okay with you," she concluded.
"Of course," I nodded.  And then, surprised to not hear an affirming response from Brian, I turned to look at him.  He didn't offer his consent and when his eyes caught mine I remembered how much he'd hated his last MRI by the end.  "Oh," I said with a smile, "he wasn't a big fan of the MRI they did in the hospital last month," I explained to the doctor.  At this, Brian exhaled a big breath and started bobbing his head up and down.  "Yeah," he admitted, "I was fine for a while... but then... I can definitely see why some patients have a hard time with them!"  And then, turning the situation into a joke he pumped his fist in front of his body and said, "But I can do it.  I can do this."
"Alright," the doctor smiled.  "You sure?"
"Yep.  Bring it," he replied.

And that was how he found himself dressed in a hospital gown, wrapped in a blanket, listening to music through headphones, and enclosed in a plastic, suffocating tube again last Thursday morning.  This one wasn't so bad, he admitted, and thinks it has a lot to do with the length of time being quite a bit shorter.  When he was pulled out, he was met by bright eyes and smiling faces from the doctors.  "Get dressed," they said, "and then we'll go over the results with you.  We have great news!"  And boy did they ever.

Brian's heart has, most unexpectedly, been very significantly healed.

Miraculously the full thickness scars have shrunk.  A lot!  Half or more of each scar has been replaced by contracting, working, pumping heart muscle.  The dead portion of the apex of his heart has shrunk, too; much of it being replaced by life.

One of the benefits of having a doctor husband is that we have access to all of his medical records and images from the comfort of our living room couch.  So, curious that night, we pulled up images from the first MRI and compared them to the second MRI to see if we could see the difference ourselves.  I thought the videos were absolutely fascinating and thought some of you would find them interesting, too. It's not difficult to see what I'm talking about, but it does help a bit to understand what you're looking at.  I have three different videos to post and think this image below really helps in understanding. The first video is of the apex of his heart. Using the image below, It's like they took a knife and cut right along that plane labeled PSAX Apex and then stared down into the bottom of the small piece they cut off.  The second video is shown from the PSAX Mitral plane, and the third video is shown from the PLAX plane.

We placed the images from the first MRI on the left of the screen and the images from the second MRI on the right to compare. The way the doctors angled the pictures on the first MRI make it look to our eye like Brian was lying on his left side.  The pictures of the second MRI look like he was lying flat on his back.  (We tried for a minute to rotate the first MRI pictures just for ease of viewing, but couldn't figure out how.) 


First the apex:

See that big old glob of movement?  That's the apex beating.  See how much stronger it is in the second window?!

And here's the second section, again so shocking in the difference!:

And the third. Pay special attention to the difference in apex contraction (bottom left in the first picture, bottom right in the second (the images are inverted in this one...)):

Is that not amazing?  After the initial MRI they told us that Brian's EF value was 47 (remember that means 47% of the blood in his left ventricle was pumped out to the rest of his body with each contraction... also remember that a normal value is anywhere between 55-75), and that they were not expecting an increase.  Final EF value after this MRI?

Sixty-five.
 
"I guess it pays to have a young heart!" the doctors said as they reviewed the results with Brian, their bright eyes revealing their surprise.  "Whatever magic potion you're taking, keep taking it!"

Magic potion, huh? I think to myself.  I'm sure the magic potion they're imagining of is a swirling mixture of medicines and youth.  The magic potion in my mind however, adds to theirs (or perhaps begins with) faith, prayer, fasting, priesthood blessings, and thankfully (thankfully) the will of the Lord, this time, lining up with my own.

He's still not allowed to go for a run or to lift anything heavier than our three year old for 5 more months (which happens to coincide nicely with getting our house on the market and moving our family down to Miami.  Oh wait... no... no, that does not coincide nicely...), but we are happy to follow the restrictions and have been blessed with good friends who have helped rearrange and remove furniture for staging our house and who will come sometime next week to pull all the baby stuff down from the attic for us.  And then hopefully my own body will get back to normal and I'll be able to do most of the lifting and hauling.

But, regardless of what the next six months bring, we are so humbled by this new miracle.  A miracle of healing.  Which is, to me, the greatest and most tender miracle of all.