[fullofbeans]

Hi jml,

I have had SVC and had to be stent.
For me it started for weeks (5 or 6) where I would wake up with puffy eye and found that my cheek where bigger but could not be sure as if I had put on weight. It was when I was enrolling for Teresa and was busy getting things done as quickly as poss so did not investigate further. I did not know what to look for. My morning face started to become a joke and shortly after I woke up with grossly enlarged cheeks and half of my neck a trully abnormal face. Also a sign is the vein on your chest they become quite visible. I went to the hospital and they wanted to keep me in until I was stent.

Because it was not detected early for me they could not do anything except for stenting (the clotting was all hard). Unfortunately my face never trully got back to normal and this to this day, causes me a lot of anguish, avoiding pictures ect.. and thinking that is how people will remember you.. it's hard and i have had to remove mirrors from my home for my own sanity. But 8 months down the line it is better, not there at all but betterwith some days are better that others but no one can tell me why.

Please do not let it get to that, act early so it can be de-clotted and therefore you are not left with a fat face on a slim body. For me they could see the blockage on the CT scan, but you need to look for it. That or the uk radiologists are really crap.. they never saw mine forming until they were asked to look for it. Usually tumours are surrounded by clotted blood around these area. If stenting is needed do it early so your vein is kept well open (better if the clot not too hard and can be removed),therefore, avoiding swollen face, which is basically the overflow that can no longuer pass th' the vena cave and it diverted to the vein going to your face)

I hope it help, thinking of you and how amazingly strong you are