Perforated veins. Yeah, I got ’em, and I don’t want ’em. This morning my friendly neighborhood vascular surgeon performed the first of four procedures, a laser endoscopy on a large vein in my right thigh. Essentially, he zapped the vein from the inside out, and now it’s closed . . . my body will adjust the return blood flow through other, healthier veins. After evaluation, we’ll move on to cauterizing the damaged veins in my right calf. Eventually I’ll have similar work done on my left leg.
I don’t feel right blogging about my own bodily degeneration. We all get old and decrepit, and what’s new about that? What prompted me to write about this is that there’s just no reason for me to have vascular problems. I don’t have diabetes, nor is there any diabetes in my family. I ran for years and years, and I still hike and ride bicycles. So why did the veins in my legs break down?
The only thing I can think of is that I flew high-performance jet fighters. I started flying the F-15 in 1978 and continued to fly it into the 1990s. Moreover, I was one of the first generation of USAF pilots to routinely subject their bodies to extremely high G forces (7 to 9 Gs on typical air combat training missions).
Last night I decided to try to find out if there’s a link between vascular damage and regular exposure to high G forces. I didn’t know where to start looking, so I started by reaching out to other retired F-15 pilots, asking if anyone else is experiencing these kinds of problems. No answers yet.
That’s as far as I got before it was time to go to the surgeon’s office this morning. I didn’t say anything about this to the surgeon or his assistant, but halfway through the operation he asked me what bought me to Tucson. I explained that I came here to train USAF pilots after retiring from the USAF myself.
“Oh, were you a pilot?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Fighters?” he asked.
“Yeah, I was an F-15 pilot.”
And then he said, with no prompting from me, “A lot of you guys have similar injuries.”
So how about that? Apparently there is a connection, and now I’m really interested in finding out more. If this is a known phenomenon, there’ll be studies, and if there are studies, they’ll probably be available on the internet. If this is an unknown phenomenon, maybe I’ll help put it on the map. Maybe they’ll name it after me!
I’ll keep you posted.