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Showing posts from May, 2024

vascular compressions: one step closer to surgery

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Monday, April 22, 2024, I had my call with Dr. Warren. We have long anticipated this call to pull together all the work I've done over the last months. My first appointment with her was December 19, 2023. In the world of rare, 5 months isn't so bad I suppose. But it's felt like a long time for me. But that's also because I've been working on figuring out my health for several years. We started off the call with her asking about my venogram and how I'm feeling post-embolization. I explained the type of pain I've been experiencing. She asked if I had seen the x-rays from the venogram and I had not. The doctor had just told me that he didn't see any compression with my renal vein or iliac vein. Below are pieces of what Dr. Warren said to me during the call if you'd like to read more in depth. I'll try my best to summarize very briefly here and you can continue reading if you wish :) She is concerned about compression of my left renal vein, despite ...

WHEN THINGS FALL APART: PART 2

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CLEAN MARGINS & CLEAR PERSPECTIVES Surgery was a month ago, and I couldn’t imagine things going much better.  As expected, the first week was the roughest.  Ashlee & I were grateful my parents stayed a couple days post surgery, then Miki took Otis for a few days so I didn’t have to worry about lifting him.  The swelling & pain never got too bad and I was able to manage with ibuprofen and an antibiotic to prevent infection.  It drained serosanguinous fluid from day 7-28 or so, but that’s to be expected.  We’ve now had 3 follow ups with the surgeon and the nearly 8 inch scar on my back is healing well, but very numb.  The cut under my left armpit is looking great, but both are tight. Ready for surgery! One month scar progress! There were a couple spots on my lymph node that the pathologist wanted an expert to look at, which took an extra couple of weeks.  But we got the report, and both the margins around the mole and the sentinel lymph node ...

vascular compressions: post-embolization life

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What day is it? I've been a bit MIA lately, so my blog is a tad behind. I'm going to try and incorporate some dates so we can all follow along better... myself included! Venogram/Ovarian Vein Embolization 4/5/2024 (a Friday!): We left off here. I wrote two whole blog posts about it. I'm a bit long-winded. We can't miss a detail though ;) Part 1 Part 2 X-ray of dye in my right ovarian vein X-ray of dye in my left ovarian vein X-ray of ovarian coils that were placed Post-Embolization 4/6-4/7 (the weekend): My main thought was, 'oh my word I'm in so much pain'. I think it hit me harder because I just had not anticipated the procedure and was still trying to wrap my head around it. What it meant going forward. How long would the pain last. Would I feel better than before. What will Dr. Warren think. Things like that. There was absolutely nothing I could do though, so I tried to stay in the moment and not dwell on it. I did find some FB groups on pelvic congestio...