Angiogram Blues

Its a strange feeling having several strangers run a catheter through your femoral artery (from a groin based entry point). You can feel the damned thing crawling about in your torso, and it's more than a little unnerving.

The room is almost chilled, probably 20 degrees with a gentle breeze that blows over your body. The Nurses and Doctor have thoughtfully covered your feet with what feels like an electric blanket, but the rest of your body is covered in the thinnest of gowns and sticky plastic and paper coverings. Look up and you see a large xray device mounted on a robot arm. Periodically the doctor calls to the radiologist in the booth to shift it with cryptic acronyms, called more like bored liturgy than anything else. The arm whirls abruptly this way and that, pausing occasionally to make rapid fire snapping and crackling noises as though it's shooting a million rounds a minute.

Then comes the freaky hot and cold flush that washes over you chest first as they inject the x-ray opaque dye, then the strange angina pain as they inflate the balloon in a congested artery. Once, twice, three times as they try to shove the fatty deposits aside with a tiny spring that looks like it's a binder for a microscopic sketchpad. Eventually they spring pops open, locking into place and allowing a greater flow of life giving blood to starved regions south of the blockage.

I have no illusions, the deposit is still there, albeit pinned behind a dam of shape memory alloy wire. I have to make some changes - dietary, medication and a raft of others if I'm to make it through the coming years. I've been through this twice now - I can't recommend it as a fun way to spend Christmas.