After reading of these terrible tragedies, I guess I should count myself among the lucky ones. I had a heart attack followed by cardiac cath and stent placement two and half years ago. All went well until I began to feel faint. I told my nurse and she immediately knew something was wrong. They wasted no time getting a CT of my abdomen, which showed a retroperitoneal bleed, and a rather large one. I was rushed off to the CICU, where I received two units of whole blood. Thankfully, the bleeding stopped on its own. But the pain from that bleed remains the most pain I've ever felt. I'm thankful that the problem was taken care of promptly and that I didn't need surgery to stop the bleed. Of coure, it complicated my recovery and delayed my rehab. But I'm grateful to still be here. I was 49 when this happend and was in pretty good shape. Maybe that's a factor in my recovery. Whatever the reason, I suspected that something went amiss when the cardiologist place the collogen plug in my femoral artery. Because of scar tissue from a very old hernia operation (I was born with it) I don't think he could enter the femoral artery in the best place and may have had to go further down than he would have liked. Also the sheath may have been removed too soon. My heart goes out to those who have lost loved ones. Since the deaths from the bleeding involved mothers, I wonder if being female makes one more predisposed to complications of this sort?View Thread
Posted byCherylKay(FromHeart Failure/Heart Disease: James Beckerman, MD, FACC)