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Mar 18, 2009 07:50

I'm feeling better, having recently experienced a medical emergency which could have proven serious had it not been diagnosed and treated. The problem? I have (or had, if they're gone now) two blood clots in my left calf.

It started out (as far as I know) six or eight weeks ago with me leaning over the bed to pull up the covers one morning. As I leaned over I suddenly had a terrible muscle cramp/pain in my left calf, the pain radiating up the back of my left leg and down into my lower leg. It was really painful and it took several days for it to feel better, during which time I limped around, rather miserable. After that it got better but I always seemed to reinjure it and that kept happening with increasing frequency every time I began to walk normally and extend my leg fully.

Finally, last Tuesday, it happened again when I turned to rush to the phone because Megan was due to return from Austin, Texas. She was flying back after looking at a grad school there and I had discovered her fight to Dallas-Ft. Worth had been inexplicably cancelled, though we hadn't heard from her about it so I was desperate to get to the phone. It turned out she was, as I'd suspected from looking at the list of flights leaving Texas that night, being rerouted to Chicago then back down to Indy in a whirlwind of confusion which also meant she had to fly through bad weather which was all over the Midwest that night. She was going to get in very late (at 11PM, it turned out) and I really wanted to go but my leg hurt so badly, far worse than before, so I finally told Dave to take me to Promptcare because I needed something, maybe pain meds or having it wrapped or something. I'd tried to get into one of my regular doctors thinking maybe I would need some, physical therapy since I was now walking weird but couldn't get in until the end of the month. I just wanted to find out why I kept reinjuring it and make it go away.

Much to my surprise, the doctor I saw there wanted me to be checked for blot clots. I said I wasn't averse to that but I really didn't think I had a blood clot since I knew when I had injured it. I just didn't fit the profile of gradual onset of pain/no known injury. He said probably not but he wanted to make sure so he got me into the hospital the very next day for a doppler ultrasound. I really wasn't worried because, again, I didn't fit the normal profile for a blood clot. So I worked and went in that afternoon for the test and was shocked when the tech said I had two of them! At that point they slapped me into a wheel chair and took me right over into the emergency department to begin treatment. I was really stunned although I knew what was comiing (coumadin pills, probably injections and definitely lots of trips to the anti-coagulation clinic since Dave had to do all that as a preventative measure after his recent knee replacement surgery.

I even had to return to the ER on Saturday due to some unexpected swelling and bruising on that same leg although they checked to make sure I wasn't over-thinned or infected and decided it was probably just the coumadin and excess fluid due to the clot having blocked the vein for a time. THe ER folks are probably getting sick of seeing me!

There is no way of knowing how long I had the clots or whether they appeared first and caused the injury or whether the injury caused the clots to form. It's a little scary in retrospect to think I was carrying these little pests around for possibly a long time and didn't know it, risking the possibility they could have moved to a very bad place. I'm fortunate I happened to see a doctor who had the insight to suspect a clot even though I didn't have the typical symptoms. So it looks like I'll live long and prosper although I'll have to stay on the blood thinners for six months and if I ever have another clot, forever. I hit the 2.0 mark on Monday so I was able to discontinue the Lovenox injections at home, for which I'm very grateful. They weren't particularly painful, just mainly stinging but inconvenient and Dave had to give them to me since I couldn't see the area (fatty tissue around the abdomen) well enough due to the girls being in the way. Bless him for being willing to jump in and do what it took. Dave is always getting roped into stuff like this with me or the cats one.

At the moment, we're empty nesters again for about a month because Megan has now flown off to Japan for two weeks to visit friends, see the cherry blossoms again AND retrieve some money and tax papers she had to leave behind when she returned last August. Then she is flying back through Chicago and on to London to sightsee for a couple of weeks and visit a friend from her lab here (the lady with whom she co-wrote the paper she had published in Ecology Letters) who is now doing post-doc work at Oxford. Fortunately, it was much less traumatic for us to say goodbye to her this time when she flew away to Japan than it was the first time. I really admire her stamina in scheduling such a long journey; when she returns and flies on to England it will be 26 hours in the air with stops at LAX and Chicago. The thirteen hours trip from Japan to Chicago was more than enough for us.
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