Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Surprise your lungs are full of clots!




I asked him three times. ARE YOU SERIOUS?

Are you serious? I asked that doctor three times over.  I really have blood clots in my lungs??  I am sure he thought I was nuts to ask him the same question three times over, but I could not believe it.  I didn't feel anything in my lungs. It was my leg that hurt.

 I had woken up two days prior with groin pain. I thought I must have pulled a muscle in my groin or hamstring.

Hubby had painted the stairs and done every other stair so we could skip one, and go upstairs.  I had to stretch to skip that step. I just knew I pulled my muscles doing that. But boy I felt I must have been in real bad shape to have this much pain!

That night about to go to bed, sitting on the toilet, I noticed my knee felt numb. I felt around my knee and down to my calf and OH MY GOSH! It was all swollen and hard as a rock!

 I have had a previous blood clot and I knew.  I was too tired to go to the ER and just hoped I was wrong. To be on the safe side, I took an injection that I had left over from my previous knee surgery.

 I took that and went to sleep.  Honestly part of me didn't care what happened to me. Since losing my son two years ago, I have not feared death at all.

 Well I woke up alive and even though I asked for prayer before I went to bed,  that it was not a clot, it was still there.

 I didn't have health insurance and I had stated that I would not ever go to the ER unless I was dying, but I knew I had no choice now. It would have been suicide to not deal with this.

To the hospital insurance or not!
 So I went in. Mike dropped me off and sure enough they found a blood clot. Not JUST a blood clot. My entire leg was clotted from top to calf.

 I had been in bed alot since we had been in a car wreck that gave me whiplash and shocked my body. It had given me a slight adrenal crisis and now it had caused a blood clot.

 It didn't end there. They put me in the hospital and tried IV's but my veins would not cooperate. Years of being in bed shrinks the veins. Thank you adrenal insufficiency.

 The machine beeped all day long, about every five minutes,  because my vein kept occluding the IV.

I was miserable. My back and neck hurt from the whiplash. I was swollen up with hives due to the stress on my body, my leg was in bad pain and I am certain I was dehydrated. The hospital didn't listen to me when I told them that, because they were not treating my adrenal insufficiency. So they paid no attention to that.  They gave me heparin to thin my blood, but no fluids.

 I thought I was going to fall apart, but a big part of that was my adrenals were dipping and I didn't realize it.

I WAS MISERABLE!
I cried out to my friends for prayer. After that someone came in with a sonogram machine and found a better vein. They gave me ice for my hives and I actually fell asleep. The next day I woke to the same mess though and that is when they gave me a catscan and found my lungs were full of clots too. One very large one was in a main vein.
 
Again, not afraid of dying, but I didn't want to do that to my kids, at Christmas.

They released me on injections Christmas Eve,  but two days later I was back.

Back to the ER! 
NO ONE gave me any info about all this. They just let me go.  They had told me in the ER that they were going to bust up the clots in a surgery. They didn't do that.

 People were telling me the clot in my lungs should have been clot busted.
I had terrible pain in my legs when I walked. No one had told me to limit any activities OR how long this pain could last. They didn't even give me any ideas to help the pain.  I have since found out that heat does help it some.
 
When I went back in, they gave me the scoop and the dangers of clot busting etc. They explained all of the issues. It wasn't very good news, but now I knew more. My heart was swollen from trying to pump blood into my lungs. I was concerned about that, but a test taken prior to my leaving the hospital, showed it was acting normal, even though it was under stress.

Why couldn't doctors have given me this info before I left?  Honestly living with AI, I find hospitals to be the most unorganized places and their knowledge of AI is really low.

 You have to be an advocate for yourself down here, or you could easily die.

Since I am on the pump, they left me to care for myself in the hospital as far as my AI was concerned. By the last day, I was taking some injections because I was getting really low and battling a migraine.  I left the injections on the table and thought, if a nurse shows up and asks what they are, I will tell her I just got done shooting up meth. (I don't do drugs lol)

 My silly way of being in control when I felt I was so out of control with everything in that place.

Now due to AI, I am at high risk for clots! 
Because of being in bed so much of my life, now I have to prevent blood clots for life. I have this one to heal from and I am trying to figure out how to stay safe forever.
I am looking at different calf pump machines that can make my legs safe on days I am crashed.

I am learning more about Stress Dosing!
Finally I have figured out that stress dosing can help a migraine and it can help my hives.
 I have had to stress dose for days because of this.
My leg is swollen, aching and purple. My lungs now hurt some.
AI the gift that keeps on giving.
My trust is in God always though. He will never fail me, leave me, or forsake me. He will help me prevail.  Back in bed most of the time because I can't walk much.  Trying to keep my attitude positive as much as possible.
If you have AI and are in bed, do some prevention. This can kill you.  Don't take that chance!