Last night, Monday 23rd December, I went to bed and started experiencing my usual coughing fit that I’ve been getting when going to bed. Only this time, it wouldn’t stop. Sarah got all concerned and insisted we go to the ER to get it checked out. I wasn’t a huge fan of this idea, it being 1am and all, and me not wanting to have yet more needles stuck in me, but I eventually grudgingly agreed to go.

We got there, explained the symptoms to the doctor, and he sent me off for a lung scan again (same as the one I had before). Oddly enough, there was no sign of the clot in my right lung, but there were 2 new clots in my left lung. Once again, they admitted me to the hospital.

At this point, I think my exact words were.. “Oh well, at least the year can’t get any worse than this”. Someone needs to hit me next time I say that.

After admitting me, a hematologist came by and talked to me and said that he was concerned that I was generating new clots. It seems having Factor V Leiden shouldn’t be enough to just cause this to happen randomly, so he wanted to do a cat scan. They made me drink these 2 jars of stuff with the consistency of wallpaper paste. I had a hard time keeping it down, but it was ok in the end.. The cat scan revealed.. swollen lymph nodes! Which means.. I probably have cancer (lymphoma). I’m out of the hospital now, but I’m going back on Friday when they’ll take a biopsy of one of my lymph nodes and find out for certain if this is the case. It seems likely, since this would also explain the sudden onslaught of clots.

On the plus side, this does mean that I have something which can be cured, and hopefully won’t have to spend the rest of my life on the blood thinning drugs. I guess we’ll see..

On another note, got the results of my blood tests, and it’s looking likely I have a disorder known as Factor V Leiden. Apparently, the most common hereditary blood coagulation disorder in the United States, with 5% of the caucasian population suffering from it. 1 in 20 sounds like a lot to me – so I’m guessing there’s a lot of people out there who haven’t been diagnosed yet.

Due to the infrequency of my posting, I shall say Merry Christmas all now.. Hope everyone has a great day.

The clot in my leg has stopped hurting as much and I can walk pretty much like usual again. Due to the clot in my lung, I can’t do anything strenuous for very long because I get extremely short of breath and end up having to sit down panting for 30 minutes or more. Hopefully, as the clot dissolves, that will get better too.

All in all, I’m feeling a lot better than I was, but it’s still a way to go before I’ll be back to normal.

I’ll start at the beginning (generally a good plan). About 3 or 4 weeks ago, I experienced an absolutely unbelievable pain in my back. I was literally rolling on the floor in agony. At the time I assumed I’d pinched a nerve or something similar – I’d done it before, it felt the same, so I pretty much ignored it. It went away after a few minutes anyway.

A couple of weeks later, my back started to hurt pretty badly, so I went to see my doctor to get a referral to a physio (still assuming it was a back problem). Last Friday (the 6th) I went to the physio, and on about the same day, I started feeling a pain at the top of my right leg. Again I assumed it was related to the back pain. Physio wasn’t productive, but they set me up with some more appointments, with an eye to reducing the muscle tension and going from there.

The next day, Saturday (the 7th), the pain in my leg got worse. Much worse. It got to the point where I could barely walk. The type of pain reminded me of the description my sister had given me of the blood clot she got in her leg. Since it was looking like this could be a genetic thing, I figured it was possible I might have the same. Since it was Saturday, we couldn’t go to the doctor, and we decided it would be a pretty good idea to get to the ER.

Sarah drove me to the ER at Overlake hospital, where they took me in, did an ultrasound and confirmed there was a clot in the superficial vein in my leg. This is not so bad as a “Deep vein” thrombosis (DVT), but still pretty bad, so they admitted me.

The following evening (Sunday the 8th), during routine monitoring of my vitals, they noticed that my blood oxygen level had dropped. They immediately called in a bunch of people who were out to do some scans of my lungs. They took an X-Ray, and some nuclear scan that required me to breath in radioactive gas, and have some other radioactive material injected into me. Upshot of this: There was a clot in my right lung as well (hence what I had previously assumed to be back pain – it was actually caused by my lung).

What seems likely is that I actually *did* have a Deep Vein Thrombosis, and that time a few weeks ago when I was rolling on the floor in agony was the time when it made the move from wherever (probably my leg) to my lung. The fact that I was still upright and breathing at this point was assured to be a good thing – apparently the dangerous moment is when it makes the move (the pulmonary embolism).

Anyway, they kept me in hospital until Wednesday, when I was discharged and finally came home. I’m on blood thinning drugs which should eventually help the clots dissolve, although that will apparently take months. In the meantime, I’m still in quite a lot of pain and find it hard to breath sometimes.

The doctors took a bunch of blood to test to confirm whether or not this is a genetic trait (it’s seeming pretty likely – 26 year old guys don’t typically suffer from this sort of thing, and my sister had a clot earlier this year, and my dad had one, and both my grandmothers.. ). The results of that should come through early next week some time.

I’ll try and keep this journal updated with the latest info, but I’m pretty bad at this sort of thing, so don’t hold me to it..

James