Warning: Long and Scary Post... My first experience with an angiogram through femoral access was horrible.
I was the 2nd last patient for the day but was asked to be on the ward at 5:30 am. When they took me to the imaging room I had been without food for about 20 hours. I was relaxed and sort of floating on the valium they'd given me and everything was pretty good until the doctor began to mutter, then he brusquely asked if I'd had an accident to my right leg, pelvis or hip in the past and I said, "Well, there was a DVT in my right groin in 1981."
He lost it on me and shouted about my not informing him of this before the procedure since the table was arranged with the monitors, clamps and IV stands set up for right femoral access. I told him that I had told the nurse and she'd written it on my chart. Basically, he continued to rant and essentially called me a liar.
The valium began to do its dirty work and I began to cry. The nurse stepped in and asked the doctor what the problem seemed to be and he shouted at her that no one informed him about the blood clot I'd had in the past. The nurse calmly replied that the information was on my chart; held out her hand for the clipboard he'd been waving in the air and flipped the page over where she'd written in big red letters:
DVT RT SAPH 81
He did not accept his error graciously. I was now trapped and in fear of this idiot, with my right leg sandbagged and clamped and his assistant shaving my left groin. They injected the local and I was left waiting but apparently not long enough, since I experienced every sensation of the puncture. What made it especially awful was that I couldn't move because of my right leg. Of course this started the crying again and my impatient doctor barked at the nurse to take care of it. It being me... Well, eventually, I managed to regain control and then I heard a snarky question, "Did you happen to neglect informing us of a clot in your left leg TOO?"
I was shocked and told the doctor that I'd never had a problem on the left. He was unconvinced and finally contented himself with a simple angiogram without reaching my heart. Imaging completed they sent me to recovery where I lay flat for 6 hours and just around 3 pm they told me I could finally go.
When I stood up I felt my right groin let go. The nurses immediately placed me on the stretcher and while one ran for morphine, the other pinched the ends of my vessel between her thumb and finger. I had a much stronger reaction to the morphine than they'd ever seen and it was more agonizing to lay still without scratching off my hide than it was to have the nurse pinch my artery together. Eventually, the sedative effects of the drug kicked in and this time they didn't fool around with the weights, they used the clamp and kept it on for 4 hours.
I was free to go but no further than 20 minutes from an ER. Thankfully, our friends' house, where we were staying was only 5 minutes from a facility and I actually rested quite comfortably there. The bruise stretched from below my breast on my ribcage, over my stomach to my belly button and down to my right ankle in a lovely shade of eggplant purple. It lasted about a month and went the entire spectrum of colours before fading away.
In retrospect, when the cardiologist told me I was going to need a second valve replacement I was more frightened of the cath than I was of the OHS. I'd told my cardiologist about my horrible experience with his "colleague" and that I'd prefer someone else to do my cath. Unfortunately, my doctor couldn't be there but he made arrangements for someone other than the problem doctor to do my procedure. That time the staff was absolutely aware that I didn't have a route to my heart. My surgeon was going to be content without the valve imaging anyway, he simply wanted to be assured of the condition of my arteries. This procedure went smoothly and I had an uneventful recovery.
Take heart and know I'm sorry I didn't have a grand experience to relate but sometimes, knowing the worst that can happen can be better than having everything painted rosy before you go in, only to wind up with a less than favourable result surprising you at the time of the procedure.
