I finally made it back to Iowa City today for a follow up on my SVC stents! Due to the fact that they were narrowing four months ago and the fact that I have also been having some pretty intense symptoms recently, including that infamous cough…I had no doubt in my mind that I would be having angioplasty today.

I was right! The right stents in my SVC were 80% occluded while the stents in the left side of my SVC were 40% occluded…or blocked. I am very thankful that the doctors were able to open them back up!! This is great news!

When doing angioplasty and ballooning for my SVC stents, the doctors are able to go through my upper arms. If you ever look close enough, you would see a bunch of tiny little white scars throughout my upper arms from all of the times that I have had this procedure done. Unfortunately, I think we had some issues going on today! Here is my left arm after the procedure which doesn’t look too bad…

And then the right side…which is the most challenging side of my body due to having the most damage from the fm. Not sure what happened but obviously there was a struggle and I did feel quite a bit of pain throughout the procedure…

Needless to say…this is what my good report looks like!! Haha! I was able to get out of the hospital fairly quick and I did not get sick on the way home!

However, as the night goes on I am starting to feel downright awful. I’m experiencing bouts of nausea as well as coughing quite a bit along with some chest pressure and a headache. They did a lot of messing around in my chest today so I am really starting to feel it. Not to mention my arms burn with any little movement I make.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got. I just wanted to provide a quick update since we have been getting a lot of messages tonight and my guess is, I will be even more sore and tired tomorrow so I will not be up to visiting or doing much of anything! I have a few rough days of recovery ahead of me but after that, I am looking forward to healing fast and seeing how much better I will feel now that my stents are open!

Thank you for all of your prayers and messages today! It means a lot knowing that we are surrounded by great family and friends who are willing to support us in anyway possible!💕

And now off to bed!