Blood Clot Update #1

Y'know, it's funny. Sort of. Here I have what might be a life-threatening blood clot in my right leg, and it feels to be the least of my worries...

Anyway, I don't think I've mentioned that this clot is actually the second clot that I've been carting around. I discovered the first one in my left arm several weeks ago while Deb and I were in West Virginia. Felt like an embedded pencil. I think I picked it up from an injection which was part of an MRI exam. At least that's the only unusual thing I've had happen to my arm in a long time.

The arm clot was -- and still is -- superficial and doesn't present anywhere near the potential harm that the leg clot does. But the treatment prescribed for the arm was warm compresses. No meds at all. And aspirin was 'way off-limits because of the chemotherapy that I'm doing. But after several weeks of warm compressing the heck out of my arm, I could feel no change in the "pencil in my arm."

However!! Since I've started taking medications for the clot in my leg, I've been using the one in my arm as an indicator as to what might be happening to the one in my leg. And I'm happy to report that the arm clot has decreased diameter from feeling like a pencil to feeling like a spaghetti noodle. Still hard -- and a thick noodle, but a noodle nonetheless.

So progress up in the arm suggests progress in the leg. Did everyone get that? It's a really good thing!!