Going for the Jugular
The surgeon told us that Enrique's cancer has been inside him for a while. "Years."
The lymph nodes in the surrounding area had swollen so much that they had begun to choke off his jugular vein. This didn't effect his blood supply, however, because the vein responded by growing all sorts of bypass vessels around the blockage.
She has to work around those extra vessels, which is one of the reasons that the surgery is so complex.
The surgeon said she might need to totally cut-off the blood supply in his jugular vein (permanently!) -- but that it wouldn't matter, because all the bypass blood vessels are already in place.
Pretty amazing.
The lymph nodes in the surrounding area had swollen so much that they had begun to choke off his jugular vein. This didn't effect his blood supply, however, because the vein responded by growing all sorts of bypass vessels around the blockage.
She has to work around those extra vessels, which is one of the reasons that the surgery is so complex.
The surgeon said she might need to totally cut-off the blood supply in his jugular vein (permanently!) -- but that it wouldn't matter, because all the bypass blood vessels are already in place.
Pretty amazing.
posted by eliot at 4:08 PM
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