Almost a Month Since He's Been Off Triple Therapy

My husband went to the cardiologist last week.  He had an echocardiogram and a stress test.  For the stress test, Steve was injected with a dye that enables the technician to see the heart in 3-D.  After the injection, his blood pressure shot up, so the tech had to give him a blood pressure pill before performing the stress test.

The results won't be in until next week.  Why it takes so long...I don't know.  But the nurse insists that because the test is 3-D, it takes about 2 weeks to get the results.  So based on that, Steve scheduled an appointment to see the cardiologist Wednesday the 18th. 

If all goes well, the gastroenterologist said he can resume treatment immediately.  So we are excited about that.  We would like to get another viral load taken to see if there is a significant change since he has been off treatment (it will be a month on the 14th), but the doctor doesn't think it is necessary.

Right now, Steve is trying to psych himself back up to get ready for the treatment.  He has the disability hearing on the fourth of December, and that is stressing him out.  Because he waited too long to file a claim, we severely doubt he is going to get approved.  Although we could really use the money, my main concern was the medical benefits, and I found out that he wouldn't be eligible for Medicare until 24 months after being approved for disability anyway.  So at least, we have health coverage from my new job.

Once again, I can't stress enough what a great source of information http://www.socialsecurity.gov/ is.  I wish we would have known about the site and all the information that is on it when Steve was first diagnosed.  We wouldn't have waited and things would probably be very different right now.  So as I said before, I hope that someone else can benefit from the lesson we have learned.