Matt,
First, you REALLY need to stop smoking IMMEDIATELY, then, you need
to ask your Dr if he feels an Arteriogram is in order. That is one of
the surest ways to find out if it is Beurgers Disease or if it is
Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD).
My vascular surgeon referred me to a different Dr. who decided what I
had WASN'T Beurgers, but rather PAD and ordered a bunch of other
tests run to prove that it wasnt Beurgers and all the tests he ran
came back negative for PAD.
An Arteriogram will show if it is Beurgers by the corkscrewing of the
arteries in the legs. Mine showed I have it in both legs, the left
being worse then the right even tho it is my right leg that is giving
me the most problems at this point in time. The Dr. that read the
test said the reason the left isnt giving me problems at this point
is that the arteries have had time to run collaterals to allow some
blood flow to the lower leg. This is in the thigh of the left leg
while the problem in the right leg is below the knee and hasnt had
time to run off the collaterals so far.
Once the Disease was confirmed though, I thought long and hard about
the taking of responsibility for this on myself. I came to the
conclusion that the tobacco industry, while telling about all the
other diseases that tobacco can cause, they sort of "forgot" to
mention this one. So I contacted an attorney and he and I came up
with a Class Action Lawsuit against 3 of the major tobacco companies.
We are not going at this in the way most do in an action of this
type. No one in the class will get rich from it, but, we want the
tobacco industry to set up a Research Foundation to benefit EVERYONE
that has this debillitating disease.
If anyone that reads this post would like to get involved in the
class action, contact me with your email address and I will forward
youre information on to my attorney for inclusion in the lawsuit.
Thanks,
Nelson Elliott