As I was copying the words of Dr. Feelgood's letter to "provide documentation regarding [my] medical condition for purposes of resuming [my] work as a truck driver," I came across this phrase:
She underwent cardiac catheritization with percutaneous coronary angioplasty and stenting and has done well clinically since that time.and I wondered what the heck 'percutaneous' meant. Like a coffee pot, maybe? I looked it up.
From Wikipedia:
In surgery, percutaneous pertains to any medical procedure where access to inner organs or other tissue is done via needle-puncture of the skin, rather than by using an "open" approach where inner organs or tissue are exposed (typically with the use of a scalpel).
The percutaneous approach is commonly used in vascular procedures. This involves a needle catheter getting access to a blood vessel, followed by the introduction of a wire through the lumen of the needle. It is over this wire that other catheters can be placed into the blood vessel. This technique is known as the modified Seldinger technique.
More generally, "percutaneous" can mean 'through the skin'. An example would be percutaneous drug absorption from topical medications.
And remember the Xience Drug Eluting Stent the cardiologist put in my LAD(Left Anterior Descending) artery? The nurse didn't know what 'drug eluting' meant, and I joked that maybe it meant the thing wouldn't "rust in there".
Actually, from The American Heart Association's website (4th paragraph):
In the past few years, there have been dramatic advances in PCI techniques, devices, and medications. Drug-eluting stents are among the most notable. These stents not only prop open the artery, they also slowly release medication that prevents the overgrowth of scar tissue that can renarrow the artery and block blood flow to the heart, a complication known as restenosis.(Some very cool graphics linked to that picture of a heart....)
In other news: Remember the neighbors who had the killer Pit Bull dog? The Sheriff's Department made them get rid of the dog and all her puppies. However, I'm fairly sure they kept one of the puppies - already a grown dog at the time of the killing. And they acquired more dogs (I think they have 4 now), but they seem like harmless mongrels - individually.
The other day (10/12, when the power was out for so long,) the Pit Bull mongrel and another one of their dogs came running around some bushes in our yard - running after Buddy as if someone had sicced (sicked) them on her. Buddy was in our yard minding her own business. When the mongrels saw me standing on the porch, they hit the brakes and ran back to their house. I couldn't believe it. Several minutes later I saw one of the owners walking across his yard.
Coincidence or not, I've been carrying the pellet gun on our walks since then. In a pack, those dogs could be dangerous. I shoot them before they even get close.
