Word: tears
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...last time I was in an HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter, it was screaming over the Iraqi desert, doors open, hot air blowing in like a blast furnace. That was in 2003, when I was an embedded reporter with an Air Force combat rescue unit. Today, as we tear across the woodlands of central Mississippi, I'm once again surrounded by guys in uniform whose mission is the same: to rescue people in need. But this time we are in my own country. The scene looks like a war zone, houses blown to splinters, cars abandoned on the roads, crowds...
...angiogram. And if you don't consider catheterization real surgery, you don't understand how invasive and delicate an operation it actually is. The process can take anywhere from four to six hours and carries a 1% risk of serious complications, including death, from wayward catheters that can tear the delicate artery walls--which is why doctors don't order it lightly. Yet 20% to 40% of patients who take the risk turn out not to have needed it: they show no significant blockages in their arteries...
...cardiac CT for what they call a "triple rule-out." Here's a typical situation: a middle-age woman walks in complaining of chest pains but otherwise seems fine. The biggest concerns are that she might be having a heart attack, that her aorta may have developed a tear or that she has a major clot in the blood vessels of the lungs. Any of these could swiftly be deadly. Her electrocardiogram comes back normal, and blood tests indicate no cardiac damage. With no compelling reason to suspect a heart attack, it's hard to make the case for ordering...
...total amount of calcium that makes vessels vulnerable but rather the way the deposits are anchored to the blood vessels. Since the vessels are flexible and the calcium is hard, the arteries are weakest wherever the calcium adheres; the more deposits, the more tension points where the vessel can tear...
...thus my summer began—surrounded by 150 kids from six to 13 years old, many with their own way to tear apart my confidence...