Get rid of your varicose veins

I lie on my back on a narrow hospital bed and stare fixedly at the sprinkler head protruding from the ceiling as Sanjoy Kundu, medical director of The Vein Institute of Toronto, prepares to fry my varicose veins from the inside out.

In less than an hour, I made the decision to book an endovenous laser treatment (EVLT) — I’ve spent more time agonizing over buying a pair of jeans. But here I am, in a paper gown, feeling somewhat loopy from the sedative I was given. “You’re going to feel a slight prick,” Kundu says as he injects my left leg with a local anesthetic. How did I get here? I wonder to myself.

Removing varicose veins: More than just vanity

Vanity has a lot to do with it. I want to wear shorts in summer. And, on the rare occasion I don a bathing suit, I hate having to respond to the inevitable “Ohhh…what happened to your legs?” From ankle to thigh, my bruised and battered-like legs look as though they’ve been through a kick-boxing class gone bad. Appearance aside, my swollen veins are also making me increasingly uncomfortable. If I sit or stand for too long, my legs ache and feel heavy. In the summer, the veins swell and itch, and I often wake up with agonizing leg cramps.

This is not my first experience with vein procedures. My family doctor sent me for sclerotherapy (more on that later) when I was still in high school — a fairly rare treatment for your average teen. Although varicose veins are more common in women than men (affecting between 30 and 60 per cent of women over 40), they usually don’t start cropping up until you’re in your thirties. Gender and genetics are two of the biggest risk factors, so as a woman with a family history of shoddy vascular systems, I was pretty much doomed. Then I had two children. Not surprisingly, the more kids you have the greater your risk of developing varicose veins.