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Ankle Brachial Index Test – image in public domain<\/em><\/p>\n The ankle-brachial index test (ABI) is the ratio of the blood pressure at the ankle to the blood pressure in the upper arm.\u00a0 Compared to the arm, lower blood pressure in the leg suggests blocked arteries due to peripheral artery disease (PAD). They have a special (and intimidating-looking) machine that includes four BP cuffs that they cinch onto your four limbs so they can compare pressures. It includes ultrasound of the noises within your arteries that are amplified so loud in the room that it almost hurts your ears. Listening to those sounds at that decibel level is disconcerting to say the very least.<\/p>\n The technician (I’ll call her Joan) hooked me up to the machine and began the test by evaluating the pressure in my right arm first. Almost immediately she blanched, looked at me for a few moments and then said “I’ll be right back”, before leaving the room and closing the door behind her. In a couple of minutes Joan came back, sat down in front of me and with a very serious voice and expression on her face she told me that I needed to go the emergency room, immediately. Normal systolic blood pressure is 120, her machine can only measure it as high as 250 and my systolic pressure was higher than that – how much higher she didn’t know. I was in “hypertensive crisis”.<\/p>\n I’m a biologist by training and I have an aneurism on my lower descending aorta that I’ve been watching for years so I knew the implications. St. Marks Hospital is in the midst of major remodeling so it’s a labyrinth of nonsensical hallways to get from where I was to the ER so Joan kindly put me in a wheelchair and pushed me all the way there. The ER folks were in such a rush to get me evaluated they didn’t even make me sign any papers, they just confirmed who I was and admitted me to the ER.<\/p>\n Needless to say, yours truly was scared to death. All the way to the ER I’d had visions of a burst aortic aneurism and expiring in the wheelchair. A situation like that does that to you – at least it did to me.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Within about five minutes the ER doctors told me I was fine. After relaxing for a bit (or trying to) my BP was only 131\/80. They said Joan must have made a mistake. They asked me if she had repeated the test to confirm her results, but she hadn’t. They called my vascular surgeon’s office to see if they could do the ABI test again, which they agreed to do, so one of the ER doctors actually wheeled me all the way back to the vascular surgeon’s office. I was much more relaxed for that second trip than I was for the first.<\/p>\n When Joan repeated the test she admitted that either she, or the machine, had made a mistake and that before I arrived the second time she had “checked and reconnected all of the machine’s tubes”. This time the machine and\/or Joan worked properly and I got an accurate result.\u00a0When the vascular surgeon finally<\/em> came in to go over the results with me he told me the blood flow to my legs and hips was “completely normal”.<\/p>\n So, the symptoms in my legs are a result of nerve impingement in my back and not insufficient blood flow to my legs, which means I’ll avoid a surgery to correct a circulation problem. I’m very relieved about that, but I’ll tell you what. Late yesterday afternoon and last night I felt like I’d been run over by a truck, almost certainly due to stress.<\/p>\n I know, today’s post resembles a typical “woe is me” social media post more than it does a Feathered Photography post but I’m still having a hard time focusing on birds and photography. For me that’s highly unusual.<\/p>\n Back to birds tomorrow, I promise.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sorry, no birds today. I’ve had other things on my mind.<\/p>\n