First We Choke It

Yesterday was my visit with the OB-GYN. I like her on first impression, though I'm a bit amused at her dismissal of the idea that my regular doctor could actually feel my fibroid and make a declaration on its current size. Well, she was the first one to detect it on exam, and the ultrasound years ago confirmed her estimate of size back then. Heck, even I can feel it sometimes while lying relaxed on the bed.

I figured walking in that I was just going to hear that I needed major surgery to remove it, after a confirming ultrasound (set up now for Thursday), another something I can't afford, like knee replacements, and I'd be spending the visit arguing about how long I could live with this thing before Medicare kicks in.

I was pleasantly surprised.

By now everybody of a certain age has likely hear of angioplasty, where they go in through the arteries with a balloon on a "snake" and inflate it to compress plaque and open up a clogged vessel. If you haven't needed it, you know somebody who has. Well, what she plans for me is its counterpart. It's called uterine artery embolization. They - actually somebody who's an interventional radiologist - would go in through the femoral artery and release tiny pellets to clog the small arteries that feed blood to the fibroid. Choked of nutrients and O2, it shrinks.

That's the polite way of saying the tissue dies off. It begs the question of how much how soon, and am I suddenly carrying around a large chunk of necrotic tissue, or is there a way to have it progress slowly so there are no or minimal side effects? At any rate, it shrinks way down and once Medicare kicks in, I can decide whether to have a hysterectomy.

There also is the question of what happens if one or more of those pellets detatches and goes wandering elsewhere.

I've got a referral to have it done, but now I need to research where and with whom, since it's not done at my hospital. I need to find out who does, and see who's covered by my plan. The literature she sent home indicates it's normally an overnight hospital stay, so there's transportation and juggling of schedules as well. And I will have to pay a percentage of the bill.

Even with all that stuff to figure out, I left her office much more optimistic than I walked in.