Hurry up to wait...

Wow... today was a very busy day for us... on the phone as well as on the road.

The day started out with the usual call to Mom to make sure she's feeling ok, which she was. She's been doing great through all this, with the occasional time of realizing what we have to deal with, but for the most part, doing great.

It was about 10:00 this morning that mom got word that Stanford called and confirmed that she had an appointment at 2:30 today. I think we were all amazed at how fast that actually happened. I then followed this up with a call to Alice (in the local office here) to make sure that we were all set to proceed with this great news. She then informed me that the insurance denied this claim, but had referred her to UCSF. She also wanted to confirm that we were still keeping the appointment with the local surgeon to wrap things up. Shortly before I left work to meet Mom & Dad at the surgeon's office, I got a call from Alice and said that UCSF has confirmed that they received all of the info and that mom will be seeing three different doctors (for three separate matters), but that the insurance needed to approve this.

Then, it was the adventure to the surgeon's office at 3:30pm. First, we were given bad directions, and I was able to quickly get on my phone and find the correct location (which ended up being only 4 minutes from work). This doctor was extremely helpful in explaining things to us (although, there was a bit of an accent, so it wasn't 100% clear). He explained the aneurysm that she has... a Communicative Artery Aneurysm. As we discussed it more, and the fact that she has an Occluded Right Artery, he mentioned how he can fix these. This doctor had not seen any of the pictures of the symptoms, but could only read the reports of others, but it was really helpful for him to explain everything.

It's hard for any doctor at this point to tell us how we can proceed since we don't know the shape and exact size of the aneurysm... we have to have an Angiogram in order to get this information. As they are doing this (up at UCSF, hopefully), they can possible go in and fix it with the Coil Procedure all in one setting. This procedure if non-invasive (through the artery in the leg), as opposed to through the skull, mouth, or nose. If all goes as planned (best case scenario), then it's a short trip to the hospital. The doctors at UCSF invented this procedure, and do over 600 a year, so if it happens there, we're the in the best hands possible.

He explained that Mom is in good shape (considering), and that's it's not an emergency situation to have this handled, but it's not something we want to wait on. Towards the end of this conversation, we concluded (the doctor as well) that this meeting was unnecessary since we're working on the referrals to go to UCSF. You might ask why we had the meeting.... excellent question, we're wondering yourself. The doctor said we didn't have to meet with him, but I'm guessing it was a matter of trying to exhaust all resources here. But yet, he never received the pictures for him to review. (Mom & I went by the imaging place, and have CD's in hand for whatever doctor we see next).

Although the doctor said this trip was "wasted time", I think we all feel it was good to have some more information in hand, knowing that we are ok for now. We still have to get more information about what all is going to be done (nothing was mentioned about the occluded artery, which could be a cause for the aneurysm). Hopefully tomorrow we can share some more!