“I was a walking time bomb. Now I am fine and exercising better than ever.”
Fifty-five year old Nancy Reedy was an avid exerciser with 6 children who had never had any major medical diagnosis or procedure. A nursing assistant II, Nancy was at work one day when she felt a sensation in the right side of her back that resembled an electrical shock. The sensation continued periodically throughout the day.
Thinking she had likely pulled a muscle in her back, Nancy went to her primary care physician who ordered a series of x-rays to confirm the diagnosis. Much to her surprise, the x-rays revealed 2 large circles of an undefined nature. Knowing they were too big to be gallstones, Nancy’s physician sent her for an ultrasound, which also proved inconclusive. After a series of additional tests, a CT scan determined these suspicious circles were not cancer but were aneurysms. The challenge however, was that doctors could still not pinpoint exactly where they were inside of Nancy.
Nancy was then referred to vascular surgeon Dipankar Mukherjee. Perplexed by the aneurysms because of their odd location, Dr. Mukherjee performed a diagnostic angiogram to see exactly where they were. During an angiogram, a doctor places a catheter into the patient’s groin and threads it through the arteries and veins until it reaches the desired location. Continuous x-ray is used to watch the catheter progress to the desired area. Once at the desired area dye, or contrast, is inserted to look at the patient’s insides, in this case, at the aneurysms inside of Nancy.
To Dr. Mukherjee’s surprise, the two aneurysms were located in mesenteric artery inside of Nancy’s pancreas. The mesenteric artery branches off of the aorta and is supplies blood to the intestines, including the pancreas which is a gland organ in the digestive system responsible for producing numerous hormones, such as insulin, and digestive enzymes. Based on the size and location of the aneurysms, Nancy would need surgery very quickly. She was, in Dr. Mukherjee’s words, a “walking time bomb.” If one of the aneurysms ruptured, it might kill her.
Nancy said the surgery went very well and the nurses and staff at the hospital could not have been nicer. She was in the hospital for a little over a week and took about three months to completely heal.
“No one knows what caused these aneurysms to occur. I have no family history of them and had not experienced any blunt force trauma that sometimes causes aneurysms. Thankfully, Dr. Mukherjee was able to make a diagnosis and perform surgery that took care of the problem.”
