My week at the spa.
As some of you know, I was feeling pretty cruddy last Friday (the 14th). I was unable to lie down to go to sleep Friday and managed a couple of hours hunched up on a boyfriend pillow. It felt sort of like ectopic pregnancy but not quite. It was more like cramped muscles, but when I tried to stretch, it just hurt more. I thought of my father-in-law, who died because of an untreated hernia, and decided to wake up husband.
It was a good moment to reach the emergency room. There was no line and both triage nurses worked me up together. At first, because my only complaint was horrible pain along the left side of my torso, they thought it might be heart attack. (I guess that's a common presentation for heart attack in women, so all of you take note.) They did a portable chest x-ray right in my little ER cubby and then took me down for a CAT scan. Within an hour and a half of my arrival, the doctor came in and told me I had pulmonary embolisms.
So ok, my grandfather had that, and was on coumadin for the last 30-40 years of his life, but when I mentioned that to the doctors, they would do that half-nodding thing and then never wrote it down. So I get the feeling they think it's a bit distant a relation to worry about, but no one has outright said that it doesn't matter. Go figure. It doesn't really matter in terms of knowing the mechanism by which this happened or how to prevent it.
Right away I was put on a heparin drip and started taking coumadin that night. We finally hit on the right combination of drugs to control the pain on Sunday night, and since then I've been sleeping pretty well. I've had ultrasound of my legs and a second cat scan of my torso. No blood clots or tumors were found, so from that angle, it's good, but it's unclear where the original clot came from or why it formed. A dozen or so blood tests are still pending. This is going to be a long journey.
I spent the rest of the week at the hospital waiting for my daily blood tests to indicate that the anticoagulants have things under control. I wasn't quite there yesterday (the 21st), but they sent me home anyway.
Anyhow, if you thought I was even quieter than usual this past week, that's where I've been. I hope you've all been doing well.
It was a good moment to reach the emergency room. There was no line and both triage nurses worked me up together. At first, because my only complaint was horrible pain along the left side of my torso, they thought it might be heart attack. (I guess that's a common presentation for heart attack in women, so all of you take note.) They did a portable chest x-ray right in my little ER cubby and then took me down for a CAT scan. Within an hour and a half of my arrival, the doctor came in and told me I had pulmonary embolisms.
So ok, my grandfather had that, and was on coumadin for the last 30-40 years of his life, but when I mentioned that to the doctors, they would do that half-nodding thing and then never wrote it down. So I get the feeling they think it's a bit distant a relation to worry about, but no one has outright said that it doesn't matter. Go figure. It doesn't really matter in terms of knowing the mechanism by which this happened or how to prevent it.
Right away I was put on a heparin drip and started taking coumadin that night. We finally hit on the right combination of drugs to control the pain on Sunday night, and since then I've been sleeping pretty well. I've had ultrasound of my legs and a second cat scan of my torso. No blood clots or tumors were found, so from that angle, it's good, but it's unclear where the original clot came from or why it formed. A dozen or so blood tests are still pending. This is going to be a long journey.
I spent the rest of the week at the hospital waiting for my daily blood tests to indicate that the anticoagulants have things under control. I wasn't quite there yesterday (the 21st), but they sent me home anyway.
Anyhow, if you thought I was even quieter than usual this past week, that's where I've been. I hope you've all been doing well.