Ryan Verhoeven

My name is Ryan Verhoeven. I am a freshman on the women’s soccer team and UC Irvine. I was diagnosed with bilateral compartment syndrome my junior year of high school. That is when the facia surrounding my muscles were too tight not allowing my muscles to expand during exercise. In December of 2016 I had all 4 of my compartments released in both of my legs at the same time; I was in a wheelchair for about a month and a half until I moved to crutches. I finally went back to playing in April of 2017 but I was still having a lot of issues. After months of doctor office visits and them running every single test they could, I was finally diagnosed from an angiogram with bilateral popliteal artery teal artery entrapment. That is where my popliteal arteries in both my legs were being almost completely cut off. From my knees down I had less than 10% of blood flow and about a month away from amputation surgery due to veins dying and not getting blood flow. In August 7th, 2017 I went into surgery for my left leg for popliteal artery entrapment, I had muscle taken out of my calf and a bypass put in place because of the amount of damage my artery had gone through. After months of recovery I again was having issues so I had angioplasties done to keep my artery from stenosising but that didn’t help. I went into another surgery on April 2, 2018 and I had another bypass surgery done. This time they took the vein from my thigh and rerouted my artery to the inside of my knee. I am 6 months post op and I am still not where I would like to be. I have not had my surgery on my right leg yet but instead I had Botox injections out into both my legs to relieve my pain. It freezes the muscles that are pinching off my veins and arteries. This keep me from having to go into another major surgery. I am about a month post op from that and still waiting for answers. The compartment syndrome surgery scars on my right leg look better because they healed better but the ones on my left leg got infected.