M called me from the cardiologist’s office this afternoon, and the news was not good.  The aortic arch has constricted again, likely due to the scar tissue from the surgery.  She is going in for an angioplasty tomorrow afternoon.

Angioplasty.  That’s something they do to sixty year old men.  Not little babies that have barely been alive for sixty days.

For those who don’t know– and hopefully, I get the description right– an angioplasty is a less-invasive surgery.  They insert a catheter into your veins, and wind it through your body until they reach your heart.  The catheter has an expandable membrane– a balloon.  They inflate the balloon where there is a constriction, and hope that the expanded vessel will stay expanded when they withdraw the catheter.  It’s safer than open heart surgery, which is what we’re facing if the angioplasty doesn’t work.