Heart myxoma

avoiceinthewind

In 2008, by fluke because I had pneumonia, I was diagnosed with having a left-atrial myxoma of the heart. I had open-heart surgery to remove this life threatening tumor. The specialists and the pathology report indicated that it was not related to my Invasive lobular carcinoma which I had back in 2001. I'm just wondering if anyone out there has had this heart myxoma after breast cancert that was treated with chemo and radiation. This kind of tumor is quite rare. But I wonder how rare it is for women who have had breast cancer. Also, I was feeling tired for months prior, felt some odd palpitations, sleep was disturbed, started losing weight...the funny thing is that if I hadn't had pneumonia which led to a chest x-ray, which led to a cat scan because they saw a shadow in my lung....they never would have caught the myxoma. I could have died from a massive stroke or sudden death. Imagine walking around not knowing you have something that is threatening your life...I wish they had full body scans so I don't have to wonder about things that doctors can miss.

BettyeE

Have you ever posted on bcmets.org?  If not please go there.  A lady just posted about having a tumor on her heart and felt there was no hope.

I am going to try to copy your post and put it there for her.

Gitane

Hello Voice,  I have never heard of this type of heart tumor; I looked it up on the internet just to find out more about it.  Thank goodness they found it and have removed it.  If you can find out more about the connection to BC or its treatments it would be very interesting to know.  I would bet our hearts are affected much more than we know.

carcharm

Actually the Cleveland Clinic sees alot of these cases. I think they can be hereditary mostly in men and occur more frequently in women 40-60(non-hereditarily). You probably were not perfusing blood to the rest of your body because the tumor blocked the passage which threw you into CHF or were weak from the lack of circulating blood. It's scary but I don't think it's related to BC treatment. Thank goodness they found it!

avoiceinthewind

Hi,

I will go to bcmets.org site and  see if I can give some hope to the lady you speak of. Thanks for your reply.

avoiceinthewind

Hi Gitane,

Yes I think our hearts were indeed affected. Afterall, why is it that before during and after chemo, a muga can for the heart? There IS a correlation. That's why I want to find out if there are more women out there...thanks for your reply

avoiceinthewind

Hi carcharm,

What does CHF stand for???  Is it congestive heart failure? You seem to know a lot about this. Are you a nurse or a doctor? Thanks for responding.

carcharm

I am neither. I did go to nursing school but didn't finish. I worked at the Cleveland Clinic as a coder. I had extensive training in the pathophysiology of numerous rare disease processes in order to code them. I have my bachelor's degree in Health Information Management.