The Truth About Heart Catheters

My cardiologist had been putting off doing a heart catheter on me because of the invasive nature of the procedure. I did my research. I knew what I was in for. I've been scoped, poked and prodded for the last four years. I've been accused of making up phantom pains and told I'm just seeking attention. And now I finally have a good doctor that is listening to me but he was putting off a procedure that could potentially diagnose my problem, so you could imagine how frustrated I was. So after trying all the heart medications he could think of and all the diagnostic tools he could think of, we were left with nothing but the heart catheter.

About ten days ago I went in for the procedure. The nurses were fantastic. Everything was explained perfectly. When I was taken back to the heart cath lab, I had the option of being put under twilight anesthesia or no anesthesia at all. I chose no anesthesia. Crazy? Maybe. But I had waited so long to find out what has been causing my chest pain that I wasn't going to miss a moment of this. And seeing as how it was going to be my cardiologist performing the heart catheter, I wanted to be fully aware when he discovered what was wrong.

And in they went. The catheter tube goes in through an artery in the groin, which gets numbed up with a local. It's a very odd feeling as the catheter finds its way up through your hip and your ribs to your heart. Though your veins and arteries have no nerve endings, you can kind of feel it 'knocking' around inside of you. (Sorry Dad. If you're reading this, you may want to skip ahead a few paragraphs.) Once it was in my heart I felt a lot of pressure. Now, I don't know if that's normal or not because of the issues that I have; this is just my experience.

Once inside my heart they were able to inject dye in order to act as a contrast to see the inner workings of my heart. With the dye the cardiologist was able to check for any blockages or further heart defects (I had previously had a hole repaired). What he found was pretty cool and I became the case of the month.

Coming off my right coronary artery are a bunch of extra blood vessels that don't belong there. I was born with them, apparently, but they didn't start causing me pain until after I had the hole in my heart repaired four years ago. Me and my crazy anatomy. They were able to conclude that these little guys were the culprit by injecting the dye in them more than once and hearing me openly complain about it more than once. I'm sure it's more scientific than that, but I'm going to go with that.

What's the solution? Well, we tried a beta-blocker drug for about ten days. That didn't work to relieve the pain. Now we're trying a calcium channel blocker. I have a follow up appointment in two weeks. If that doesn't work we have two more options before possibly resorting to another heart surgery. I'll stick with the drugs, thank you very much.

Recovery from the heart catheter was not exactly what I expected. The next day I was in a lot pain. I have had a lot of surgeries and this groin pain still reduced me to a whiny baby. Thank God my husband stayed home and literally did everything for me from fetching my Tylenol to making me a sammich. He's the best.

Incidentally, today is my anniversary. Four years STROKE FREE!

Stroke Free Anniversary
Picture by Laura Romero