My Scare With Blood Clots Had A Happy Ending, But It Was Still A Dangerously Close Call
A close call with severe blood clots in my leg.
So, I will set the scene. I had one week in between when my spring classes ended and when my summer classes began. I was all set up to spend that week with my boyfriend at Disney World. Day one of the trip, we were headed to Magic Kingdom with fast passes for all three mountains in the park.
On the way over to the park, my leg started to feel very tight, like all of my muscles were clenched and I couldn't release them. The feeling just got worse as I was walking and my leg just felt heavier and heavier. At one point, I went to the bathroom and noticed that my leg was swollen a lot and had turned a purplish color. I told my boyfriend that we had to leave immediately.
I tried to just rest it and elevate my leg for the rest of the night. But in the morning, it was almost impossible for me to walk on it and the pain was only getting worse. I have had hip problems in the past and most of the pain was in my hip area so my boyfriend and I went to an orthopedic and my dad met us there. After X-rays, the doctor said that for the most part, my hip looked fine and he was concerned about a blood clot. I went to the hospital to get an ultrasound and unfortunately, they saw a clot and sent me to the emergency room.
At first, the emergency room doctors seemed optimistic that all they would have to do was put me on a quick blood thinner and then follow up with my regular doctor. However, with further inspection of the ultrasound and the clot, they admitted me to the hospital under the pretense that it was basically just an overnight observation. There was a lot going on and a lot of needles for testing and medicine (I am terrified of needles so this was great for me).
At first, I was started on a medicine that was given as an injection twice a day in my stomach. But after two days with little improvement, my treatment plan switched.
They started me on a much stronger medicine that was a constant drip in an IV. This meant I needed another IV and that they had to take my blood every 6 hours to see how the medicine was working. In addition to my fear of needles, I have very hard to find veins so the lab people had to come up to get my blood because it was too hard for my nurses to get. The nest plan of action was surgery.
I am generally not scared of going under anesthesia or having surgery but this one scare me a bit. There was a possibility that I would wake up from surgery and have a catheter in the back of my knee and have to be transported to another hospital for further operations. By the grace of God, I woke up from surgery without a catheter and good news from my doctor. My surgery had gone well, he was able to remove the clots that took up almost all of my leg. The bad thing was that he found something messed up in my anatomy that basically caused my artery to compress my vein and that is what could have caused my clots.
By the looks of the clots, they could have been building for up to a year. He had to install a stent in order to keep the vein open for the rest of my life.
Currently, I am at home. I was in the hospital for 6 days and went through a lot of testing and pain. I still have pain and I still might for a while. I still have some clots in the bottom half of my leg because the veins are too small to operate on there. I am on blood thinners and other medications. We still don't have the answer on what exactly caused the clots or what the rest of my life looks like in regards to the treatment of this problem.
This was a very scary experience and still is confusing and takes a toll on my brain. I worry about things such as being on blood thinners for my whole life or not being able to take estrogen due to the risk for blood clots. However, I got extremely lucky that I had no clots in my lungs and that the doctors were able to help me as much as they could.
Never ignore the signs of your body! If something feels off, get it checked out. I had a lot of aches and pains in the past few months that could have been pointing to this problem but I didn't find it until the main signs showed up. Pay attention to yourself! I was incredibly blessed to have my amazing family by my side even with the two-hour drive daily and my boyfriend holding my hand the whole way even though we missed a whole week of Disney. I was also super grateful for all the happy wishes and prayers that people sent my way.
