"My god," I thought, "Just as the saying goes, I am turning into my mother."
What I had was a case of spider veins, not the varicose veins my mother had running down the inside of her left leg like a Adirondack mountain range. Still, I worried that the spider veins were a precursor to my own mini-mountain range and so I kept the unsightly veins covered under knee-length skirts in summer. It was just as well that I never was a beach person, I thought. No one had to see the veins since I was never in a bathing suit.
And then, two winters ago, a friend convinced me to go to Tulum, Mexico, for a week-long beach vacation and my spider veins were outed. So was I. Turns out I'm a closet beach freak (those are my legs pictured here from the vacation). Since bathing suits are now in my future, the unsightly veins had to go. Stat. I went to the Web and started researching.
My search led me to The Vein Treatment Center on Manhattan's Upper East Side and to its founder, Dr. Luis Navarro. Navarro gets rave reviews from the top echelon of New York medicine. Renowned physicians Jahangir Rahman, Patricia Allen and Lisa Airan all recommended The Vein Treatment Center to former Vogue editor Sally Singer, who then wrote one of the best magazine beauty pieces I've ever read. She was pleased with the results.
If Navarro and The Vein Treatment Center were good enough for Vogue, then they were good enough for me. I booked an appointment for a consultation and secretly wondered if it was really possible to erase 12 inches of blue veins from each leg.
A Meeting With Dr. Luis Navarro
One reason I chose The Vein Treatment Center is because I wanted a specialist who knows veins very, very well. I had read many accounts of disappointed patients who had their veins treated at a dermatologist's office and saw no results despite spending 100s -- sometimes thousands -- of dollars (each treatment is about $300-$500 per session, depending on where you go). This, in fact, happened to Singer, according to her article."This is the only thing I do in life so I better do it well," said Dr. Navarro with a good-natured laugh when I met him in his office.
In fact, Navarro has been treating veins in the legs, hands and face for more than 30 years and is the co-creator of the endovenous laser treatment, a method that allows doctors to use lasers to remove bulging varicose veins without cutting into the body. In the past, doctors stripped the offending veins, first putting patients under general anesthesia, then making cuts at the groin and the ankle and pulling out the offending veins. It was a surgery my mother never wanted, so she put up with the pain and discomfort.
One concern I had with sclerotherapy was the results, which are not guaranteed. I asked Navarro what he does that a dermatologist wouldn't do. According to Navarro, dermatologists not well-trained in treating veins may be unable to find the true cause of the spider veins. "The problem is likely a foot away," he says. A poor sclerotherapy job can actually cause more veins to appear. This I did not want.
Spider and varicose veins are largely inherited but can be caused by pregnancy, age, obesity and prolonged standing. Because my mother had varicose veins, I have a propensity for them, Navarro said, estimating that my chances are about 60-80 percent over my lifetime. Eeek. When I asked him if I would ever need treatment again after my rounds, he said, "I can take care of the veins that are here now, but your propensity still exists."
That sounded fair to me. But I had one last question: leg crossing. In our meeting, I noticed both of us had our legs crossed and I'd always read that it could cause vein problems.
Navarro laughed and shook his head "no" as if he were letting me in on a dirty little secret. That was a relief. I could go on with what I always thought was a bad habit. Ladies: go ahead and cross those legs. Navarro said it's okay.
The Consultation at The Vein Treatment Center
Before you sign up for treatments, you get a free consultation to determine how to proceed. Navarro's assistant took down my complete medical history and asked me detailed questions about my vein problems. It turns out Mom and I are in good company: One in three women have spider veins and 25% of women suffer from varicose veins, according to veindirectory.org. We would find out during the diagnostic tests, which are part of the consultation, if my deep veins are in good working order.During the consultation, I changed into a gown and the assistant did a venous Doppler test on my legs in the front and the back at the two "junctions" where blood flows into the main veins and arteries of the legs. "Defective valves actually sound different," said Navarro. My veins, it turns out, are in good working order.
After the Doppler, a few digital photos of my legs were taken. We discussed the best procedure for treating my veins, sclerotherapy, which consists of saline injections (about 25-50 per leg) all along the veins. Then I was told a list of side effects that happen very rarely to people but had to be mentioned to me (none involving death). I was already sold, so I said, "Let's do it."
The Sclerotherapy Procedure
The entire procedure lasted about 15 minutes. While I laid on my side and then on my back, Navarro injected saline all along the offending veins and at their sources.I took a couple Tylenol at least an hour before the procedure to help cut down the sting from the needle but I was surprised to find the 50 or so injections were actually less painful than laser hair removal. Many injections didn't hurt at all, while some really stung. After the injections, I experienced a bit of itchiness which was the saline working its way through the veins. But the itching lasted only a few minutes.
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