A scan everybody should consider doing!

[Arcticdude]

I went last November and tried out the newfangled technology of an EBT scan. It's essentially a very fast cat scan. It's fast enough to pretty accurately look at veins and arteries in a given area to see how they're doing, blockages, aneurysms, etc. Just doing the heart area took about 3 minutes and only required me to take my shirt off. Cost at that time was minimal, but in hindsight, it would have been worth several hundred.

I had essentially no previous issues. I was finding I'd run out of steam fairly quickly, but attributed it to becoming an "old fat guy". Genetically high cholesterol was my main reason for doing the scan, but figured I'd be seeing patients who've had it done and wanted to learn more about it.

Turns out I had a fairly large aneurysm right at the junction of my aorta and my heart. It was large enough that once detected, most thoracic surgeons would immediately operate to repair it. So off I went to a recommended cardiologist, who then ran the more standard tests. Confirmed the aneurysm and found a poorly functioning aortic valve, which was what was causing my quick loss of energy.

So maybe I'm not an old fat guy, yet!

Anyway, within a week of seeing the cardiologist, is was sitting in the thoracic surgeon's office discussing surgery. They felt things were dire enough to want to do this before Christmas! I put it off until mid January. Yesterday was my first day back in the office. I still get tired quickly, but feel things are improving steadily, now.

My point for disclosing all this is that had the aneurysm ruptured, I would have not survived long enough for the wife to hang up from calling 911, much less getting any kind of help. Absolutely no indication of this issue. I was EXTREMELY lucky to not have had a rupture while driving the bird! Not only would I be dead, but probably the resulting accident would have killed my wife and other innocent parties.

I'm not a real fan of technology, because its mostly succeeded in the dumbing down of society and little else. But there are some advantages to it and this technology is one of them. I will probably spend the $600 and get the full body scan done. If I've got one aneurysm, why can't there be more is my thinking. While this last month has been one of the toughest of my relatively short life, I don't regret taking the route I did. In six months, I'll probably be extremely glad that I chose it.

So I would strongly recommend everybody have an EBT scan done. I truly hope you will find absolutely nothing!