Terrible, terrible things

He's home. Wobblier on his feet than he ought to be, but home nonetheless.

I said that the angiogram they did came up negative. They couldn't discharge him in the shape he was in, however, and the attacks were continuing. They scheduled a second angiogram, thinking that they might have missed something. That, too, showed nothing, so they performed an IVUS (intravascular ultrasound) procedure. A bit of Googling tells me it's quite expensive, which explains why they didn't do it in the first place.

They went in through his wrist and found the trouble spot, which was at a bend. Because of the difficult location, they had to confer on whether to use a stent or perform bypass surgery.

On the way to the neighbouring room to talk it over, one of the assistants snagged the tube going into his arm with her x-ray gown, jerking the wire. Everyone went "whups" but the heart monitor didn't blip so thought nothing of it.

They talked.

When they returned, they saw more than a pint of blood pooling under the table. The blanket under his wrist was soaked as well. The snagged wire tore the artery in his wrist, and he was bleeding heavily while they talked. One tourniquet later (yeah, a tourniquet) the bleeding stopped. But it was a complication that kept him in the hospital for another day so he could regain his strength.

The final decision was to balloon the site and then insert two stents (because of the bend).

I picked him up yesterday morning. It was a very happy day. Here's hoping things stay that way for a while.