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Saturday, May 30, 2015

Cardiology Visit

We just had a visit from dad's cardiac team. They poked and proded him, asked a few questions and told us the plan for the weekend.

The MRI is still a go. This gives them a better look at the heart compared the previous echocardiograms. This appearing, disappearing thing in his heart will be discovered or disproven.

There is also a cardiac catherization planned. The will insert a tube into one of dad's blood vessels in his groin area and snake it up to his heart. Coronary angioplasty, the specific type of catherization they will be doing, allows the team to check for blockages in the heart's blood vessels.

If there are blockages there are a few options, bypass surgery being among the most well known. A vein would be transplanted from another area of dad's body and would be used to skip over the blockage.

Balloon angioplasty is a less invasive procedure that produces similar results. They go in with a catheter, just like for the exploratory process, but the catheter is inflatable to allow the blockage to be pushed out of the way.

The hope, of course, is there are no blockages. We want the reason dad's heart is weak to be related to activities, it lack thereof, not buildup in his veins.

Whatever the reason and test results, I'm sure we are in capable hands.

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