My name is Ariana Feldberg. I have been living on the island since 2000 and this is my second time reinventing myself to add to the vineyard community. I have been a dental technician since 2012, and was named one of the top women in dentistry my first year. Quite an honor! With technology advancing the way it is to heading towards 3D scanning and production of removable prosthetics for dentistry, I am not as busy as I’d like to be. So, time to reinvent myself again and think what I could bring to the island that it is lacking. So back to school I went!

I am now a nationally certified CIMT technician. This stands for Carotid Intima Media Thickness. It is an ultrasound of the wall of the carotid artery to look for early detection of heart attack and stroke risk. It is painless, no needle, non-invasive, no disrobing, just simple ultrasound scan of your carotid artery. The technology has been around for over 20 years, but is just starting to become standard of care in the US. It is not the same as the scan that looks at blood flow through your carotid artery. This is a very specific protocol that looks at specific areas in your common carotid and internal carotid arteries looking for inflammation and plaques that are early detection signs for heart attack and stroke risk. I can tell you, that school literally saved my life.

I am a healthy 42 year old woman, who eats properly, exercises regularly, not overweight, no family history of cardiac events, and have always had low cholesterol. I am not one you would look at and think- she’s at risk for a major cardiac event. But yet, I am! During school, when we were practicing and scanning each other, a plaque was found in my right carotid that has an 85% chance of killing me, or causing a life altering stroke that would make it so I would need someone to change my diapers by the time I was 52! Needless to say, it’s being treated. That’s the nice thing about this scan. It’s all testable and reversible.

My treatment is now a simple pharmacological pill (statin). The goal of this scan is to provide the early detection so things can be treated with medicines rather than surgery or worse, it being too late to prevent a cardiac event.