Hello everyone! On December 12, 2010, I had received my confirmation email for a September 2010 appointmentwith Dr. Simka in Poland. At that time, I had mentioned to him that if he ever had a cancellation that he wanted to fill, that I would be there with a two day notice. Well, fast forward to last week and Dr. Simka wrote me saying that if I could be there by Jan 19th, they would do my MRV on the 20th with the Doppler and surgery on the 21st! So I am now sitting in my hotel room in Poland, with the procedure having been done last night!
What a whirl wind! I would have written sooner but this really is the first chance I have had. The actual procedure only took about an hour, with a stent put into my right jugular vein and the angioplasty balloon done on the left. The three doctors were very pleased with how well it had gone. I stayed overnight in the hospital and woke up with two normal feet, rather than the cold, purple feet that I have had for the last two years!!
They have been warm all day with normal color and actually tingled for the first half of the day....I think the skin tissue was getting used to proper blood flow again! I have been pretty exhausted, as you can imagine, with jet lag from the west coast on top of surgery. I really believe this is going to do tremendous things for me. I also noticed improvements in my voice quality, breathing and balance today, which has been pretty non-existent for a while. I came over here in a wheelchair so I don't have my walker to do any comparing with the walking, quite yet. The other big initial improvement is that I have had NO pain in my neck AT ALL today, and my neck has hurt every day for the last six months!
I will write some more tomorrow with more details about my trip. One added thought for tonight….the only reason I could afford to do this was that I cashed in 210,000 air miles. Otherwise, the airfare for two of us with no notice would have cost as much as the entire procedure! ALL I CAN SAY IS THAT THIS WILL BE SSOOO WORTH IT FOR ALL OF US! Bye til imorrow! Brynn
:)
