Embolization of Pseduo Aneuryism

[ajc1991]

A couple weeks ago I posted that the nurse practitioner under my surgeon said she was concerned about this bump under my skin that was left from where the carotid tube was. She sent me to have a carotid ultra sound done and said they would give me the results in due time. At the time, the radiologist took a look at the ultra sound and said it looks like a pseudo Aneuryism. It's when the vein that they punctured with the catheter gets ballooned up and leaks a bit of blood. Sometimes they are not serious if they are controlled. The two things he said they could do is 1. Nothing, and just keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't get bigger or 2. Inject medication into it that clots the blood around it. But sometimes they go down in size without anything done to it. He said that they'd only really do surgery if it's very large and capable of bursting.

I got a call a couple days ago for the nurse practitioner saying that the vein is actually close to an artery and to be safe they want to do an embolization, which decreases the size of the vein and they fill it with a substance that closes it off so it's not leaking blood. She said it's not a major procedure, just precise. It's considered an outpatient procedure but I'll will have to spend the night in the hospital. The procedure will take place tomorrow. A really good thing is that I can stay on my Coumadin.

I'm lucky that this is a small bump (pun kind of intended ) in the road compared to some others. Other than that I'm doing very well.