When my pain was at it worse it would radiate to my back, between the lower part of my shoulder blades. I have heard of other MALS patients with these symptoms and it can be hard to determine if it is cardiac or another artery. How are you doing now?

What type of surgeries did you have and were they successful?

I had open angio plasty for sma and cut part of the diaphragm to release the celiac. Not sure of all the technical terms. Long surgery, 7 plus hours. They did a lot of stuff. I think the celiac was so entangled as well and pushed the sma farther or something like that. Anyway surgery was successful, the pain was gone, it was slow recovery in just getting in and out of bed. Huge incision across from top of ribs kind of vertical to down over the belly button. By 4th or 5th month they started narrowing again. Continued so by a little over a year and a half I had stents put in each artery. Open by pass would have been best option, but I was physically to weak. I had a lot of stress going on aside from the physical issues that really effected my recovery. Then this past Oct. I had angio and balloon in the celiac. I still have a lot of pain. I had some relief after both of these procedures, but keeps narrowing. I don't know why. Also there is the issue of celiac ganglion nerves. I didn't even know about that until the past year. It could also be from that nerve pain. But if your scans are showing occlusions I would think that isn't the main problem. There are a lot of people that have MALS surgery, open or lap and after recovery are symptom free. Like I say, everyone is different. You also need a qualified MALS surgeon and qualified person doing and reading any of the images.... I wish you luck and please keep us posted.

I went back to Dr. Hsu after further consoltation... He said I have bigger unrelated issues going on that I need to resolve. DROPPED. Still doing pretty bad; but, I'm guessing that things are thoracic at this point.