Recovering

On Friday, December 10th, I had an endovenous laser ablation procedure performed on my lower left leg. That's the fancy term for annihilating a vein!

If you remember, I had really bad issues with spider and then varicose veins during my pregnancies with Luke and Jack. So bad with Jack that I wore compression stockings during most of my pregnancy, which wasn't so fun during the hot summer months! But it wasn't really an option because compression stockings were the only things that provided me relief. My problem was my lower left leg, between my knee and my ankle, and for some reason the varicosities and swelling was limited to that area. One time during my pregnancy I was afraid I had a clot because a portion of my leg almost looked like a pecan sticking out! A quick trip to the doctor confirmed I was safe, but needless to say this was all a problem.

After having Jack, the varicose veins have mostly gone away, but the pain was still there. I decided that if we were going to consider having more children, there was no way I could enter pregnancy knowing that this was going to happen again! I saw a cardiac disease doctor who ordered an ultrasound on my legs, and the ultrasound showed insufficient flow in the vein that runs from my knee to my ankle. Well duh!

Because I'd already taken less invasive measures to try to treat my issues, insurance approved the endovenous laser ablation treatment. What happens is the doctor stuck a teeny tiny laser up my vein, then slowly pulled it out as the laser was on, and that closed down the vein so that the blood had to find a different way back to my heart. Yes, it's totally safe! What this does is shut off the main vein that flows into the smaller ones, where the blood sits and pools for whatever reason. At a later date, I'll most likely have injections into my leg to get rid of the veins that were varicose.

The surgery was easy, it took only about 15 minutes from start to finish! I was slightly drugged up and ordered to continue walking around instead of taking it easy on the couch all day. ;-) I've been wearing a super-tight compression stocking on my left leg since the surgery, and it's provided so much relief!

The recovery has been a little harder than I expected. My leg feels very sore and it hurts today just as much as it did last week! I was told that it would take a good two weeks to feel back to normal, so I'm hoping I don't feel so bad by Christmas! It feels very bruised but there are no visible bruises, but it's very tender to touch and it initially hurts when I stretch it out. I don't like taking pain medication unless I absolutely have to (since I'm breastfeeding), so I've avoided taking anything after that first day.

I'm holding out hope that this was all worth it!