Reduce Your Risk Of Premature Death By Having Your Aorta Scanned For Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA), Or Your Parent’s, Or Your Grandparent’s Aortas

Hi folks,

My last post-doctoral fellow, Ke Xu, a wonderful person, great thinker, and a pleasure to work with, plus she found a great guy, Jack, and here is Ke at her wedding escorted by her father. Wouldn’t have missed it for anything.

Abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is more common than you might think, and I suspect that the majority of AAA-induced deaths go undiagnosed, based on my experience with the thing. I found mine in the nick of time, and only because of my study of body awareness combined with a veterinary medical training. Two of my three sons had an AAA scan, which is carried out by ultrasound, takes about 15 minutes, and costs less than $100, apparently. They were both fine, and now they have valuable baseline data on their aortic diameter in the AAA region of this biggest of all blood vessels in your body. The technology for fixing an AAA once diagnosed is improving all the time, so go get scanned, or encourage your older family members to do so, especially if you have a history of an AAA in your family.

There is actually an AAA screening program in the United Kingdom, so at least they are taking it seriously.

This is my July 4th weekend blog post, and it was the best that I could do with severe jet lag. We went to Hawaii to my last post-doc’s wedding, where a nerdy mathematician (and wonderful person), Ke Xu, turned into the most beautiful bride.

If it wasn’t for the fortunate detection of my AAA in 2010, combined with the wonders of a Cook Zenith stent graft and the skill of my surgery team, I suspect that I would have missed this wedding, and everything else for that matter.

-k @FitOldDog