A Bump on the Road to Surgery

After four bladder surgeries, 13 blood transfusions, more than 40 days in the hospital, and tests galore, I was sure it would be clear sailing to the big surgery on August 13. However, the surgical team wanted to make sure all the risks were contained. One of nurses asked me to take a walk down the hall with her. It was difficult but a pleasure. When we got back to the room, the nurse asked if I felt any pains in my legs. I said there was just a small pain in the middle of my lower right leg. That triggered the need for an ultra sound scan to make sure there was no deep vein thrombosis in the leg (DVT).

 The pain was mild, but you don’t take chances with a DVT. A DVT is a blood clot that forms in a deep vein, usually in the calf or thigh. It can lead to swelling, pain, or redness. The danger is a DVT clot can break loose and travel through your bloodstream to your lungs, causing a potentially fatal pulmonary embolism. The cause of a DVT can be long flights or bed rest.

A vascular surgeon took a closer look at the scan and concluded the clot was not a DVT but nevertheless it needed to protected against before the big surgery coming up in two days. The protection would be an Inferior Vena Cava (IVC) filter, is a small medical device placed inside the inferior vena cava. Another surgery, more anesthesia. The IVC would be placed into the large vein which carries blood from the lower body back to the heart. The filter would catch and trap blood clots that break loose from veins in the legs before they can travel to the lungs and cause a potentially fatal pulmonary embolism.

Introductory stories:

The Road to Recovery 
The Bumpy Road to Recovery

Epilogue – The image of the road to recovery was generated by my Perplexity AI for use in my blog post in August. I asked the AI to add some bumps in the road to reflect what is happening. All articles were written by me.