ABSTRACT
The stories of three people, each with the same disease, serve to illustrate how people vary in the ways that they construe the value of life and in how much they fear, value, and desire medical services. The aorta is the largest blood vessel, carrying blood from the heart to the rest of the body. It is the main pipe, the major highway, a critical piece. For most of them the aneurysm grows slowly, at a rate of an inch every few years; the risk of rupture and sudden death is about five percent a year. The aortagram was the first sign of trouble. An x-ray picture of the aorta is produced by sticking a needle into an artery, slipping a catheter into the artery over the needle, and then gently navigating the catheter upstream through the arteries into the aorta itself, and finally injecting a dye that lights up on an x-ray.
