Surgery

I made it through the surgery yesterday successfully and easily.  I think I have been so excited at the thought of not having these veins sticking out on my leg that I didn't have time to worry about the surgery.  I had no anxiety going into it yesterday.  I even told them in the surgery room to do whatever they could, no matter how much it hurt, to help my legs look better.  I didn't take the muscle relaxer medication so I was very alert during the procedure.  The surgery room was freezing and my biggest struggle was keeping my legs from shaking on the table.  The nurse tried hard to warm me up, but I never did.  I enjoyed listening to the exchanges between the doctor and the nurses.  There was humor and concentration and much professionalism.  It was a good experience.

So here is what they did to me.  The procedure is called laser ablation.  After numbing my leg, the doctor made a small incision and entered a catheter in my great saphenous vein. The catheter was placed all the way up my leg to my groin area.  Once that was in place, he worked his way down through the catheter with a laser and basically killed the vein.  So that vein is not functional anymore.  It was causing reflux all these years and that is why small pools of blood formed all up and down my leg and caused the vein to bulge.  So now we wait to see if my body will dissolve the dead vein.  If it doesn't, then in a few months I will have to consider having a phlebectomy done, which means pulling the dead vein out of my leg so there are no more bulges.  Here's hoping that my body takes care of it on it's own.

My recovery time yesterday wasn't too bad.  I had discomfort in my leg once the numbing medication wore off.  And I developed a headache, which I never have.  So I was down for the evening.  Luckily Dan had the day off work and was home to care for the kids.  I did have to get up and walk every hour to keep the blood flow moving and prevent blood clots.  I am on Lovenox, a blood thinner, that is injected in my stomach.  Since I have a blood clotting disorder I have to take extra precautions.  I am also taking an oil combination two times a day to help prevent inflammation.  My oils sure did come in handy yesterday.  Francincense and oregano for inflammation, lemon in my water, peppermint for my headache and lavender for keeping me relaxed and calm.  I started to worry about the headache and felt a little panicked.  The thought of having a blood clot is quite scary.  Thank goodness Dan is in the medical field because he kept reassuring me that I wasn't showing any signs of a clot.  And I slept through the night and got out of bed just great this morning.  I even put on a pair of shorts today.  Mya was the first one to notice.  She said, "Mom, you have shorts on!"  I feel better wearing shorts with a bandage on my leg rather than showing my varicose vein leg.  It felt nice to let my one normal leg see the light.