The angiogram was a terrible experience. The doctor performing my angiogram had significant difficulties. For some reason he could not get in on the right groin area. After repeated tries, he then began on the left. I was scared, and I knew how risky angiograms could be with blood clots and/or other complications. I lay on the table, semi-conscious for hours. I never said a word; I just prayed I’d live through this ordeal. A few days after the procedure, I was black and blue on both sides from under my ribs to the middle of my thighs. I even had my neighbor take a picture of the bruising because it seemed so abnormal.
I saw Dr. DeAngeles a week later. He saw the bruising, but did not mention it. I didn’t say anything either: I had lived through the procedure and for that I was thankful. During this visit, Dr. DeAngeles read the report for both the Doppler test (without treadmill) and the angiogram. Since I had had the angiogram and the Doppler test done on the same day the results should have been consistent. Dr. DeAngeles said that the results from the Doppler test read within limits. Just as it had in the previous years, the Doppler test showed that I had a good blood flow in my left leg. However, I was told that the angiogram showed that the stents were blocked. The surgeon's report read: “Multiple areas of recurrent stenosis in the stents.” I was confused. Why did the angiogram show many blockages when the Doppler test St. Mary's had performed showed the same results as in the past? If the results from the Doppler test were correct there should not have been any blockages. I didn’t get much of an answer to my questions; I just had the feeling that this doctor didn’t want to discuss my previous medical history. In 1999, Dr. DeAngeles had been one of the doctors to convince my first back surgeon, Dr. Bogdanowicz, that my vascular system was stable in spite of Bogdanowicz’s fear that I might have had a vascular problem.
Before I left, Dr. DeAngeles asked me how I was walking since the surgery. I said, “It hurt so much from the procedure I’m not able to walk far enough to know.” I guess he didn't notice or didn't want to address the fact that that I was so black and blue from the problems with the surgery. Because I was still in so much pain from the surgery, it took several weeks for me to realize that my leg was better. I continued PT with Dr. Timmerman and his staff. After a month or so, I was walking a mile on the treadmill, dancing, attending concerts on the square, enjoying local events, and walking with my clients without having to stop every block. It had been over a decade, but I was beginning to get my quality of life back.
Imagine what a terrible blow it was when a few months later the pain in my left leg came back. In January 2005, the pain had returned and I began having the same walking problems I had had before the angiogram. I felt that Dr. Timmerman had been the first person to really listen to me, so I did not want to direct the brunt of my anger, disappointment, and sense of futility at him. I did my best to hide my feelings, but I kept returning to the same questions and the same dead ends: why bother to open the stents if the problem is going to return after just a few months? Eventually these feelings came out during my appointments; in tears and filled with sadness, I sat and listened as Dr. Timmerman talked on the phone with a colleague. I remember him saying, “I've got her as limber as some of the 30 year olds that I am working with, and she can't walk from [my office] to the parking lot!” In April, after continuing with my PT, despite the fact that my condition continued to deteriorate, Dr. Timmerman was determined to put an end to the problem once and for all. After reading my PT reports Dr. Timmerman wrote in my records, “I suspect she needs more aggressive treatment by vascular surgeons.” Dr. Timmerman called Dr. DeAngeles trying to figure out why the last procedures had not had any lasting success. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Timmerman received a follow-up letter to their conversation. Dr. DeAngeles said in quite callous, blunt terms: “There is no more that can be done for this woman.” To be written off in such definitive terms, hurt and still hurts to this day. Not surprisingly, neither Dr. Timmerman nor I were satisfied with this, but I had become so habituated to this kind of dismissal that I was ready to give up. Thankfully, Dr. Timmerman was not, and to his sincere efforts I attribute much of the successes that were still to come.
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