So, Don, I am so happy to see you are expecting, how many months are you along?. Nope folks, that is my belly bump. Not very flattering picture. Hello, my name is Don and I am a chronic overeater.
You get shaved in all the right places, laid flat on a table, lightly sedated but not asleep. They inject a radioactive tracer that lights up all your heart arteries on a screen for the doctor to drive through. He inserts a very thin probe into your major artery in your groin area probably preloaded with a collapsed stent.
They examine the blockages in the heart and have choices of ballooning out the blockage or inserting the stent and expanding it to push back the plague. BTW when the blockage is in a place where arteries branch from one to two, you are in trouble, they can't fix those. It's bypass time.
My left anterior descending was 80 percent blocked, its a pretty big artery, the Doctor ballooned the end of one stent and added one just above it. Fixed.
They take you to a room, made sure the hole in your major leg artery through which they enter has clotted. I had problems with this bleeding and they had to send the team into the room to help stop the bleeding this time. You have a plastic patch you keep on the spot for two or more days. You have to stay flat on your back for four hours and have six hours of drips to let the nasty stuff in the tracer get out of your system.
My cardiologists have hired a women who has learned the newest way to do heart caths, through the arm....less problems healing and recuperating. Not this time for me.
Best change to beat this... diet and exercise, cholesterol control, stress management yada, yada, yada! So, here I go.
1 comment:
Thanks for the info on what they actually do--amazing.
Know that you are being lifted up and we are so thankful that once again they can manage your issues.
love, Eden
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