Blood clots and other scary stuff

I had been looking forward to my week “off” of the infusion chemo. What a weekend we ended up having! Thursday afternoon, April 27, I got very short of breath. Headed to the doc who took one look at me and had the nurses wheel me to the ER. Fortunately, we had friends on call at the Alleghany ER so that made things a bit easier. Off the the CT scanner I went and sure enough, I had a large clot that stretched from my right lung, across the middle to my left lung. Guess it was pretty big since they called it a “submassive saddle PE”. Great. The good news was that I was relatively stable and breathing well on room air. If I were to become less stable, the local ICU could not provide the anti clotting treatment I would need so we decided to give me a dose of blood thinner and ship me off to the surgical ICU at Lewis Gale in Roanoke.

Jim and Jenna packed for a few nights and followed the ambulance to Lewis Gale. Turned out visiting hours were really restricted. Only the first 15 min of every even hour. After getting me settled, they checked in to a hotel across the street. I spent a relatively uneventful night in the surgical ICU followed by morning testing which found my heart to be doing well but clots in both legs.

By 9:30 Friday morning the interventional radiologist was placing an IVC filter that is meant to catch clots before they can travel to the lungs. That part went really smoothly. Worst of it for me was that I needed to stay on my back for hours afterward. I was able to move to a regular floor that evening and was feeling much better. By then I could walk to the bathroom with only minor shortness of breath.

Got to come home on Saturday evening. Now I get to give myself blood thinner injections twice day. I am grateful that things went smoothly and turned out well. Going to take a while to physically recover my stamina but I’ve started with laps up and down the front walk reminding myself that at least I’m moving. I know Jim and Jenna used my texts lists to get the word out. Thanks for all the prayers and encouragement! It was a scary time.