Drawing, February 18, 2007__
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Six months after the placement of the second stent, once again I experienced problems in exercising and breathing, with a slight uncomfortable feeling in my chest. Restenosis was happening, the biggest problem with stents. The artery was getting blocked from the scar tissue slowly surrounding the second stent.
I went back to San Francisco. I asked Dr. H. to run the catheter and angiogram through my wrist, as is frequently done in Europe. After three previous angiograms, there was scarring of my femoral arteries, and the last time there had been swelling the size of a grapefruit that made walking difficult for weeks.
He put a drug-eluting stent in, a fairly new product that was shown to greatly reduce the likelihood of restenosis. I wondered why this had not been done in Anchorage six months earlier.
Dr. H. as they say in cardiology parlance, “Is a good man with a wire”, and I had the easiest recovery I had ever had.
In San Francisco, my wife and I went to Grace Cathedral and walked the Labyrinth, a replica of the 12th century Chartes labyrinth that pilgrims walked as a spiritual and symbolic way of walking to Jerusalem. I have been very skeptical of such New Age California fads, and I was very surprised that it was quite a deep experience. Somehow, all the walking and turning changed my mental state, and I found myself quite thoughtful and grateful.
Six months after the placement of the second stent, once again I experienced problems in exercising and breathing, with a slight uncomfortable feeling in my chest. Restenosis was happening, the biggest problem with stents. The artery was getting blocked from the scar tissue slowly surrounding the second stent.
I went back to San Francisco. I asked Dr. H. to run the catheter and angiogram through my wrist, as is frequently done in Europe. After three previous angiograms, there was scarring of my femoral arteries, and the last time there had been swelling the size of a grapefruit that made walking difficult for weeks.
He put a drug-eluting stent in, a fairly new product that was shown to greatly reduce the likelihood of restenosis. I wondered why this had not been done in Anchorage six months earlier.
Dr. H. as they say in cardiology parlance, “Is a good man with a wire”, and I had the easiest recovery I had ever had.
In San Francisco, my wife and I went to Grace Cathedral and walked the Labyrinth, a replica of the 12th century Chartes labyrinth that pilgrims walked as a spiritual and symbolic way of walking to Jerusalem. I have been very skeptical of such New Age California fads, and I was very surprised that it was quite a deep experience. Somehow, all the walking and turning changed my mental state, and I found myself quite thoughtful and grateful.
