Changes in Iowa

Hi Everyone,

It is a beautiful, sunny day in Iowa City. It did snow a little yesterday, but nothing much stayed.

On Thursday Charlie had an echocardiogram, transthoraic to see how his heart would stand a lot of extra fluid going through the body which is what will happen during a transplant. Yesterday, we got a call from the cardiology clinic and they wanted us to come in for an appt. in the afternoon. Well, the upshot of this is that Charlie is temporally (we hope) off the transplant list, because the test showed that while yes, it can stand the fluid pressure just fine, but there were concerns about the aortic valve opening which showed some scarring and narrowing – aortic stenosis. (We think that is what they were saying!) The transplant surgeon has to have a heart clearance and they can’t give it right now. The plan is that Charlie will have, next week, a heart CT scan done by a special machine that the cardiologist said that there are few of these in the country. It has higher resolution and can show clearer the measurement of the aortic valve opening.

This has been quite a shock and upsetting to us since everyone both in CA and in IA have been saying that his heart is good to go. The cardiologist did say to us that he thought that Charlie was going to be OK to go ahead because the pressure measurement was good and that somehow the narrowing and OK pressure just doesn’t compute. (This has been the story of Charlie’s health history lately!) The test they do next week he says will be the tiebreaker.

On a better note, Charlie’s sister is flying here today from CO for about a week to see her favorite (only) brother – I am sure that Charlie is going to so happy to not have my eagle eyes watching his every move.

We hope that all is well with you and we will you posted on this latest “bump” in the road! Please keep Charlie and the CT scan in your prayers.

The picture of the field house is where Charlie use to work as an ROTC instructor when we were here from 1971 to 1974. The eagle is what we see along the Iowa River and the others are of the hospital area and of course, the football stadium which is across the street from the hospitals.