Following is an update of Hélène’s week of assessment in Toronto since last Wednesday.
It’s hard to believe that we’re now Sunday December 18th… time flies and only 1 week until Christmas!
Thursday
Thankfully our day started much later. We slept in and had a leisurely breakfast.
Hélène saw the nutritionist and was informed that she’s considered to be at a healthy weight for a potential transplant candidate and is making good dietary choices. Good work Hélène, your support team will be happy to know this. :)
After that appointment she had a 6-minute walk assessment. She needed to walk as many laps as possible during a 6 minute period while on oxygen. They were measuring her heart rate as well as her oxygen level in her blood (oxygen saturation) with a machine called an oximeter. I believe Hélène took it like a gym challenge where you want to get a great score; you should have seen her take off pulling her tank…. and she kept a pretty good pace for the duration of the test. How she felt later on though was another lungstory. The results of this test indicated changes in her oxygen levels that had not been noticed before which could explain how she felt afterward. None the less, she carried on to the last appointment with the Pre-Transplant Nurse Coordinator of the program. Again, lots of good information was provided to us.
Normally, reports from the testing can take 2-3 weeks. Once the results are available, the team meets to review and discuss each referred patient individually and makes one of 4 potential decisions:
1) Yes, you are a transplant candidate and now is the recommended time for you to be on the list.
2) Yes, you are a transplant candidate but now is too soon, we will continue to monitor you until the right time comes.
3) Yes, you could be a transplant candidate but we need to do more testing to confirm it.
4) Unfortunately, for reasons….the transplant is not an option.
Friday
We gathered our bags and left for Ottawa around lunch time. This was a very tiring week for the three of us but as you can imagine, even more for Hélène. We were concerned about our return trip as she seemed to have some more shortness of breath but after a couple of days at home, her colors are back and she’s her bubbly self. She has a follow-up visit with her Ottawa respirologist this week and will be discussing this past week experience with him.
Because we are close to Christmas and the Holiday Season, it is possible that some of the results will be delayed and we were told that Hélène may not hear from the Toronto nurse coordinator until the end of January.
So now…we wait…