Me and My Blood Clot

It felt like a muscle strain in my right calf. And I've pulled and strained and banged around most parts of my anatomy over the last 60 years or so that I didn't give it much thought.

Okay, granted it lasted for several weeks -- which was certainly unusual, but with the nervous anxiety I've been dealing with, there was a sensible rationale for a long-term muscle strain. At least I thought so...

But Monday morning, I found that I couldn't put any weight at all on my right leg. So I hobbled to the back room to retrieve my crutches and negotiated my way down the stairs to breakfast. (You do have a pair of crutches in your back room, adjusted to your height and arm length, don't you? Geez, I've pulled mine out of storage, it seems like at least once a year for the last 10 or 12... But I digress.)

So Deb, the crutches and I made our way to my 9:00 AM radiation treatment. When Joan, one of the super-est Super Nurses I've ever known, came in to the waiting area to say "Hi," she took one look at the crutches and said "Those are yours?" I confessed. She said "Don't move. Dr. Ochsner [not my normal rad doc] will be here shortly." And she disappeared.

When Doc Och (please don't tell him I called him that!) showed up, he asked two or three questions and then said: "Get your radiology treatment now, and your next stop is Chester County Hospital. I'm writing up a 'stat' scrip for an ultrasound on your leg. That will get you past any waiting line-up in the Emergency Room. And I'll have them phone the results to me immediately. You should expect to be admitted then and there."

The ultrasound showed positive for a DVT (something like "Deep-Vein Thrombosis") or blood clot extending from halfway down my thigh to halfway down my calf. They started me on a drip-bag of blood thinner shortly afterwards (Heparin?), and it took an hour or so for a room to be ready for me. Not too shabby!

The drip-bag-thinner-therapy lasted until morning (and please remind me to tell you what a relatively pleasant experience this last overnight at the hospital proved to be!), when it was terminated in favor of a injection (Lovenox) and a pill (Coumadin). I'm now giving myself Lovenox injections twice a day(!) for the next week or so, and will be taking the Coumadin for the next 4 or 5 months. After that, things should be back to normal. Oh yes, and I'm wearing a compression stocking almost full time as well.

It seems that blood clots are a not uncommon side effect of chemotherapy, but no one had mentioned this to me and I hadn't come across this in any of the literature I'd read. The danger here is that part of the clot breaks loose, travels up the vein and then gets lodged in a lung, an eye or the brain.

I'm still totally dependent on my crutches to get around, but the nurses told me to expect that. Maybe 4 or 5 days...

Three useful metaphors:

-- "just another bump in the road"

-- "the roller coaster took another unexpected drop"

-- "just keep putting one foot in front of the other."

It's times like these when I think so fondly about all of you out there in cyberspace -- reading this, pulling for me, making suggestions, telling me stuff that helps so much to keep me balanced.

God bless you all.