Home! I got to leave the ER around dinnertime last night. My heart and lungs looked good on the many tests they ran. My favorite test was the final one, the echocardiogram. The tech was friendly and talked through what we were seeing (they don’t usually do that), which was awesome. Seeing your heart as it’s beating is pretty encouraging (some might say heartening?) when you feel like your body isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do. Look at you, little heart, you got this! There are a couple of places that are particularly painful, and when she got to those I pointed them out and got to see on the monitor that everything looks good. Since heart inflammation or damage are possible side effects of immunotherapy, it was helpful to see that we’re in the clear on that going into chemo.

My doctor thinks the chest pains are worse because of gut inflammation from the Advil I was taking…to help my chest pains (which I think are probably caused my the mass in my chest, which is still there though smaller and much less malignant). But we think we can calm all that down with some meds and “gut rest,” where I eat really low acid food for a while to get my body back to normal. Obviously all I want to do is eat Indian food now that I need to eat really bland foods, but that’s ok!

I ate soup, slept a ton last night, got a call today from the good nurse from Monday to see how things are going, and generally am feeling much better now that I’m home and rested. Thank you everyone for all of your messages of support! And the biggest thanks to my mom, who stayed in the hospital with me overnight and had low-acid but still delicious foods waiting for me when I got home. She’s been an all star.