August 28th, 2006
After a terribly stressful day involving about 100 phone calls concerning an incorrect Radiology order, an out of town doctor, and some necessary emergency blood work and other lab work (re: pee in cup), I actually have some good news.
While I am still having an angiogram, they are going to be doing a CT angiogram as opposed to a catheter angiogram; the CT angiogram is less invasive and is less likely to have complications. In fact, they don’t even put you “under” for the CT angiogram and you can even drive yourself home. Whole thing should take like 20 - 30 minutes.
Anyway, I’ll be having both CT scans (the lung and the angiogram) Wednesday evening after work. I just have to fast for 4 hours before I go have it done.
This sounds a lot less scary than the other way.
Tags: Takayasu's Arteritis, CT angiogram
August 25th, 2006
So, it turns out that I’m going to be having an angiogram to see if I have Takayasu’s Arteritis. I just found out. There was some sort of miscommunication between the doctor and myself. He told me “CAT scan with injected dye”. I think I would have taken it a bit more seriously if he had said “angiogram.”
This comes a day after I got an email from my mother saying that she read that Takayasu requires an angiogram for the final diagnosis and that basically worries her or somesuch.
So now I’m a little freaked out. I mean, if I my mom is worried, then it must be a big deal because she used to send me to school all kinds of sick when I was growing up. The one time I got to stay home from my minimum wage job was when I had 102° temperature and that was just the once. Generally I can gauge how serious an illness is by how worried my mom is about it. If she’s really worried, the person’s probably going to die.
Right now I’m waiting for the appointment to be made. The doctor had to fight with the insurance company to get the angiogram covered. I guess they didn’t think a 35 year old needed one. They refused the first request so he had to appeal. So now it’s approved but they’ve still got to schedule it with the hospital. They’ve got to get the angiogram in and also that CAT Scan of my lungs — which I kind of feel a little better about because after doing a little reading (and I do mean a little — there’s not much on the subject of Takayasu’s on the internet) I did find a reference to a possible scarring of lung tissue due to the narrowing of blood vessels around the area due to the disease. Scary, but not as scary as cancer, I think.
I’ve been trying to do some research — because I’m one of those people who likes to know things — but as I said, it’s hard to find information about Takayasu’s Artertis. I did searches on google, at online bookstores, etc. Very little info.
Here’s a couple of useful links in case anyone else needs them too (note: much of the information is repeated):
If you have any information on Takayasu’s you can share, please do.
Tags: Takayasu's Arteritis, angiogram, CAT Scan
