Warning: Really long post ahead. If you choose to read it, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.

Saturday, March 4, 2017

Like any other Saturday, I was with my friend Nikki. We had already played tennis, and were off to go for a quick run. Well, it wasn’t intended to be quick. We had talked about trying to run a 10K that morning. While skeptical since I had never run this far, I wasn’t going to say no. My stubborn self was going to do my best to run a 10K, even if I had to walk parts of it. We set out running the YMCA track, and within a 1/2 mile or so, I knew something wasn’t totally right, but I couldn’t tell you what was wrong either. I was struggling. My chest felt heavy, and I was out of breath so quickly. Being stubborn like I am, I was determined to keep going though, so I kept pushing myself. I’d run a little bit, but then have to walk not too long after. A short while later, Nikki couldn’t do the slow pace that I was barely maintaining, and I didn’t blame her. I just couldn’t go any faster. I finally gave up, walked the last little bit back to the car, and let Nikki go on without me. I sat in the car, caught my breath, and was then completely fine. I chalked it up as coming down with a cold and didn’t think much more about it.

Monday, March 6, 2017

Since the run on Saturday, I had been feeling fine. However, while at work on Monday, I couldn’t help but notice that my chest ached. It wasn’t a terrible pain, it felt like I had been punched in the chest, but it seemed to get worse as the day went on. Once again, I assumed I was coming down with a bug, or maybe I had pulled a muscle playing tennis the day before, and didn’t put much thought into it. That night, I took some ibuprofen to dull the pain, and did my best to ignore it.

Tuesday, March 7, 2017

The pain in my chest hadn’t gone away, and at this point, it was starting to get concerning. It didn’t seem like anything I did touched the pain. However, I wasn’t having any other symptoms, so this pain wasn’t explainable. After some thought though, I decided to make an appointment at the State health clinic just to get checked out, but couldn’t get in until the next day. I suffered through the day and couldn’t wait to just be home that evening. Little did I know, things were only getting worse. That night, I took a hot bath, hoping that, along with more ibuprofen, it would help me feel a bit better. I went to bed early, but I couldn’t lay down. The pain when I laid flat on my back, or on my side was absolutely excruciating. The only way I can describe this pain was it felt like my chest was caving in. When I would lay on my back, it felt as if someone was sitting on my chest. When I would lay on my side, it felt like my lungs were falling into a hole. I couldn’t bear it, so I grabbed a blanket and pillow, and decided to sleep on my reclining couch that night. Needless to say, I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep that night.

Wednesday, March 8, 2017

After a pretty sleepless night, I drug myself out of bed (or should I say, off the reclining couch) and into work. I knew I had a few meetings that I needed to be at, and I’m not one to call in sick, so this would just have to be another day. It was a struggle. I was so distracted by the pain all day that I would have been better off not going in at all. I had my appointment at the health center that afternoon. When I went in, I described my symptoms, and they did a general check, listening to my lungs and heart. Nothing of concern to note. The doctor threw around a few thoughts, maybe pneumonia or pleurisy, so he wanted a chest x-ray. But before I headed over to the imaging center, he said he wanted to have a D-Dimer run just to be safe since I was taking an oral birth control pill. A D-Dimer is a blood test that can indicate the presence of a blood clot. He didn’t think it was likely, but he wanted to rule out a blood clot even though I didn’t have any of the typical symptoms outside of chest pain. It was just a precaution in his mind. Now, a D-Dimer doesn’t say for sure that you have a clot or not, but, depending on the outcome of the test, they would know what to do next. They drew some blood for the test, sent it to be tested, and sent me for x-rays. I had chest x-rays taken, and they told me they’d be in touch. So, without having any news, and assuming no news was good news at this point, I went back to work for my last meeting. During the meeting, I had reached my breaking point. I have a seriously high pain tolerance, which isn’t necessarily a good thing, but I couldn’t sit around anymore, After the meeting was over, I went home for the day.

If I had thought the night before was bad, I was in for a rude awakening. I was in so much pain at this point. I had taken a hot bath, taken ibuprofen, tried Vicks on my chest, and nothing was helping. I had run out of ibuprofen, so my mom brought some by my house. None of us knew what to do, but my doctors hadn’t seemed overly concerned, so why should we think the worst at this point. All night, I thought about what to do. Was the pain bad enough to warrant going to the ER? Was I just being a baby? What should I do? I decided that I was going to wait to see what my doctors had to say the next day as all of my test results should be in by then. Yes, I suffered through another agonizing night attempting to sleep on my reclining couch because I still couldn’t lay down.

Thursday, March 9, 2017: My Worst Nightmare

I used the first sick day of my career with the State of Montana. I hadn’t slept much at all for the second night, and decided it just wasn’t worth going in to work feeling the way I did. I dozed off throughout the morning, watching movies, and simply doing nothing. Part of me felt guilty about not being at work, but I also knew I needed to rest as something just wasn’t right. Early afternoon, my phone rang. It was the doctor’s office calling me about my x-rays. There was a questionable spot on my lung, and they wanted me in for a chest CT as soon as they could get me in. The earliest that could happen was late afternoon. So, I forced myself to get semi-presentable by getting dressed and pulling my hair back. I had been keeping my family in the loop about how I was doing, and my mom told me that she would come pick me up for my appointment. I fought her hard on this one. I didn’t need help. The imaging center is literally one mile from my house (I know because I run that route all the time), and I was totally fine to drive 2 minutes down the street. She still showed up at my house to pick me up, and I wasn’t impressed.

The CT was miserable. As I’m sure all of you know, you have to lay down for a chest CT and I hadn’t been able to lay down flat in over two days. The tech helped me slowly lay down. I was so close to tears, but dammit, I wasn’t going to cry here. I spent the entire previous night crying, and I was so done with that nonsense. That was just the start. Throughout the CT, you have to inhale and hold your breath. Ha! What a joke that was. It took every ounce of my strength to listen to that damn machine. I wanted to scream, to say “you hold your breath when you’re in this much pain!” Finally, the CT was over, and once again, the tech helped me get back up as slowly as possible. I was told I could go get dressed, but to hang out for a minute. That minute stretched into five. Then I was told I could go to the waiting room, but that I needed to wait. To this day, I don’t know how long we waited, but it felt like an eternity. It was the end of the day, we were the only ones there, and it was silent. At that point, I knew it wasn’t good news, but I wasn’t sure what it would be. The door finally opened, and the radiologist came out. Go figure, the radiologist happened to be my friend’s dad too. When he came out, my heart sank. Doctors don’t come out to talk to you unless it’s bad news. At the same time, I don’t think he was ready for the patient to be someone he knew. You could tell by the look on his face. We were both in a tough spot. At that point, he told me that I had a blood clot in my lower right lung, also known as a pulmonary embolism, that was the size of a grown man’s thumb. There was more though. The lower lobe of my lung had been cut off from blood and oxygen for so long that there was an infarction, which means the lung tissue had died. (You can see the clot and the infarction on the left side of the image below). It was extremely serious, and ironically, the spot on my lung from the x-ray was not the same spot as the blood clot. I needed to go straight to the emergency room, tell them what’s going on, and that my CT images would be sent over immediately. At this point, I think I went into a state of shock. However, I can tell you almost every detail from here on out for the rest of the night. I may not have admitted it that night, or even to this day, but I was glad to have someone with me at that moment.

The hospital is right across the street from the imaging center, so we didn’t have far to go. I checked in at the desk, and within a few minutes, I was being taken back into my room. I got into one of their gowns, got situated in the bed, propped up just right as to not have any pain, and then they tried sticking cardiac monitor leads to my chest. I was so hot at this point that I was sweating, and the leads would barely stick, so they added some special glue. Things seemed to be moving quickly, but so slowly at the same time. At this point my mom and Nikki were with me. I was glad to have a friend, and personal nurse around to interpret what was going on. I was being constantly monitored while nurses and doctors kept coming and going, but oddly enough, I didn’t ever need oxygen or pain medication. Each time a doctor came in, they all had a surprised look on their face, and I got the same question from each of them; “do you know what’s going on?” And I would recite the same answer each time; “I have a blood clot in the lower lobe of my right lung that is the size of a thumb.” They all knew what I didn’t; that I shouldn’t have been as stable as I was. After a while of waiting around, I was given a Lovenox injection, the first dosage of an anticoagulant to help my body start to dissolve the clot and prevent further clotting. After this, I waited around while they decided whether I was going to be admitted to the hospital overnight. At the time, I really didn’t want to spend the night. I just wanted to be home. Once they decided to keep me overnight, I sent my mom to my house to get a few things for me like some sweats, my phone charger, and my glasses; all necessities of course. I didn’t get taken to my room until after 10PM that night. I had been in the ER since just before 5PM.

Once I got taken upstairs to my new room, I gingerly got into the bed, and in came Nurse Ratchet. Everyone else with me knew I hadn’t been able to lay down flat without excruciating pain, but Nurse Ratchet just wanted to get her job done. She immediately started to lay my bed down, without warning, and without a given reason. Well, it turned out, she needed to get my weight, and told me that was the only way, so despite my repeated protests, she got her way. Thank god, she didn’t come back after that. My new nurses got me settled and setup on all the monitors. It was late at this point, so my mom was heading home. Nikki would leave shortly after that. We all needed rest after this day. But my mind had other thoughts. I hopped on my phone and started looking up everything there was to know about pulmonary embolisms. I wanted to know what was happening and what I was in for regarding recovery. This was a mistake. The first thing that popped up was a statistic, and one that I’ll never forget. The first symptom that one in four people have with a pulmonary embolism is death. Whoa. 25% of people who have a pulmonary embolism just get blindsided and have no chance at correcting the issue. 25% of people don’t even make it to where I was at that night, sitting alone in a hospital room. Damn. That was absolutely horrifying to read, and after that I didn’t need to read anymore. I was lucky to be alive. No wonder my doctors had such strange looks on their faces each time they came to my room. I did my best that night to get some rest, so I ate some applesauce, took some Tylenol, and tried to get some sleep. I was mostly successful in between check-ins from the nursing staff, but it was still a pretty short, restless night.

Friday, March 10, 2017

The next day was uneventful. Nikki didn’t have to work, so she came to hang out with me and even brought me coffee (the best part of my week!)! My mom and stepdad, Jim, stopped by to check in on their way to work. All seemed pretty much fine at that point. Now, I sure didn’t feel great, but I felt a hell of a lot better than the few days leading up to this. The doctors sort of hemmed and hawed about whether or not they’d discharge me that day or not, but in the end, they let me go. I was started on Xarelto, an anticoagulant (blood thinner), and would have to take that for at least 6 months. I had chosen this route over Coumadin as it didn’t require me to get my INR checked weekly. Once I got home, it felt so good to take a hot shower, and change clothes. The rest of the night was all about relaxing. Nikki had brought over pizza, we hung out and watched movies. It was just what I needed. I finally slept in my bed that night too, albeit propped up with pillows, so I still wasn’t flat.

The next morning, Nikki and I went to breakfast at our friend Paula’s cafe. I needed to get out of my house, and breakfast, coffee and friends cure everything, right? As you can see from Nikki’s creation below, we had a good time, and the food was great as always! [In case you can’t figure it out, that’s supposed to be a recreation of me with my blood clot! Can you see the similarity?]

Over the next few days, I felt like I was the oldest person on the planet. I could barely walk without getting out of breath. I felt like I was constantly hunched over. Every move I made was made so gingerly as to not make sudden movements. I had a bit of a cough due to fluid on my lungs, and it hurt so bad. Hiccups even hurt. At one point, I had to hold in a sneeze for days because I was terrified to feel the pain that would ensue because of letting it out! It wasn’t fun when it finally came out. It took me well over a week to be completely pain free, but even longer to feel something similar to normal, if that ever actually happened.

The Aftermath:

Fast forward to summer/fall. I had been playing tennis like normal, and had gotten back into running, although a lot slower than before. It felt so good to be doing the things I loved. However, I wasn’t back to normal. I was low on energy and my chest burned with physical exercise. It started to wear on me. In the fall, I had to go in for my yearly insurance health screening where they do a blood draw. I had every intention of just having the blood draw done and skipping the meeting to discuss the results. I had spent enough time with doctors the past few months that I didn’t need to add in another appointment. Around that same time, I had also setup an appointment for spirometry to test my lung function. When I went in for spirometry, they thought I had come in for my lab results, so they decided to do both. Well, I guess it was a good thing I was there that day. My iron levels were so low, I should have been barely functioning. Any lower and I was at risk of further, more serious issues. So, double whammy day. I had been diagnosed with a reactive airway from my spirometry results (essentially asthma due to the trauma in my chest, which explained the issues with exercise), and I also needed to go see the hematologist and cancer specialist at the hospital to address my iron levels. I was able to get in the next day and ended up having an iron transfusion because my levels were so low. It was either that, or suffer through the next few months trying to rebuild my iron supply through supplements. While the setup for the iron transfusion was pretty comfortable in my own private room with a TV, heated blankets, and a plethora of snacks and drinks, I wouldn’t recommend hanging out here often. A few weeks later though, I felt like a new person. I had energy again. I wasn’t craving ice. I wasn’t quite as forgetful [I was seriously Captain Dumb Dumb all summer…]. What a good feeling it was to be myself again!

Iron Transfusion – October 2017

Since then, I can say that I’ve been lucky enough to not have any further complications for the most part. Sure, my chest is still overly sensitive, especially with illnesses and cold weather, but I’d take that over the alternative any day. I also still worry too much when I feel any abnormal pain in my chest, but I have my checklist to go through to prove to myself that I’m not having another blood clot. I’ve been getting my iron levels checked every few months since the transfusion, and they’ve been hanging on to be close to normal. Hopefully, one of these days, they’ll be high enough to where I don’t need them checked quite as often, but again, it’s a small price to pay to have the second chance to live this life. All of this has just gone to show me that you can’t take life for granted as you never know when it could be taken from you.

During all of this, I learned that the cause of my blood clot was my birth control pills. The doctors were able to rule out genetic factors through additional blood tests, and I didn’t have any other known risk factors. You see TV commercials about birth control all the time where they say blood clots are a risk factor, but who really thinks about that? For what I knew, I was taking care of myself by using a birth control recommended by my doctor. No one could have predicted this would happen. It’s just one of those things. Life likes to throw you curve balls, and it’s up to you how you deal with it. I’m just glad I had the opportunity to deal with this issue, and to have that second chance.

Now, I’m not telling my [whole] story to scare anyone, although it is terrifying. I’m asking all of you to help me by knowing the risks, knowing the symptoms, and sharing these with people around you. Blood clots are preventable and can be treated. If I can help one person by sharing my story, then I’ve done my job.