Get Well Soon!

PAD Sucks!!

About 30% of patients with heart disease have PAD or peripheral arterial disease which is blockage of the arteries in the legs. As you all know, my father, Donny, has heart disease. Well, he also has PAD. Ironically, I sell a device that cleans out the plaque that causes the blockage in these arteries. This device is called the SilverHawk and it was used on my dad yesterday. He had been experiencing pain in his thighs, calves and feet. He is doing great and already home. Dad is a little sore but is getting around just fine. The cardiologist, Dr. Borno, also had to put a stent in his renal artery, which is the artery that runs off the aorta into the kidney. Keep him in your prayers, please as he is so tired of getting worked on all the time. Maybe this will be the end of it for a long while.




This is an illustration of the SilverHawk device inside an artery. The blade exposes after the doc turns it on and it shaves off the plaque and then stores it in the nosecone. It's pretty amazing! I have been selling these for fourteen months and I never get tired of being in a case. The results are usually amazing and the patient feels better almost immediately.



This is not my dad's angiogram but I decided to put some before and after pictures so you could see what actually happens to the arteries. This is a picture of a patient's blocked superficial femoral artery. Notice how the bloodflow stops in the middle of the pictures. This blockage causes pain and can eventually cause non-healing ulcers and sores that will lead to amputation. Unfortunately, many diabetics have lost their legs due to this very thing. They have so much blockage due to their disease and they don't catch it in time to save their legs. So depressing...hope you aren't bummed reading this blog. It's about awareness, ya know?



This is the picture taken of this patient's artery once the SilverHawk procedure had been performed. Notice the straight-line flow to the rest of the leg. Pretty cool, huh? So, to make things less-depressing...there are technologies that can help these patients and luckily, I work for a company who owns one of these awesome technologies. I love my job!!



I know, this is yucky. This is the actual plaque that comes out of these patient's arteries. Plaque is caused by high cholesterol, cigarette smoking and other very unhealthy things. This is not my dad's plaque. I took this picture after one of the cases I was in on recently.



Lastly, this is an illustration of the arteries of the legs and also a picture of what a blocked artery looks like. My dad had blockage in both legs and has had them both fixed. Yesterday, he had his SFA and posterior tibial of his right leg fixed. Pretty nifty, huh?

GET WELL SOON, DAD!! I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!