I don’t typically write in my journal, but I figured so many people have been asking what happened, it would be handy to have somewhere to keep track of it all, and where better than this?
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