Well I did not get clearance to go back to work because I had a major setback. I ended up having deep vein thrombosis with pulmonary embolisms in both lungs on February 27. Jeff took me to the emergency room with shortness of breath and chest pain pains. I literally was sitting in the ER and could not breathe, they were busy. I had him go up and tell them no you need to get her back there so she can at least be put on oxygen. We go back there and they kind of ignored me until this lady walked by and she’s like are you OK? I’m like no, I can’t breathe so they got me on oxygen and sat there a little while longer. They take me back for a chest x-ray and you could tell that they were like, oh you know there’s nothing wrong with her. We’re just gonna do this too pacify her. I hear the x-ray tech say, “oh shit” I knew there was something wrong. He immediately is like come on, we’re going next-door. They take me next-door to ultrasound. They do an ultrasound of my leg, which I thought was weird. I’m talking to the person who’s doing the ultrasound and telling her, “yeah I’m going to Australia April 7.” She gets really quiet and she just looks at me with that, oh no you’re not look but she didn’t say anything. I get back and Jeff sitting there finally the ER doctor came by and said, “You’re being admitted to the hospital. You have blood clots in both lungs and you have a blood clot in your leg.” I immediately had break down. I’m crying. I am on oxygen and I’m essentially having a panic attack. I can’t wrap my head around what I was just told, especially with what happened with my aunt last year. It was just too much so they asked me if I was OK with a shared room. I’m like sure. Just get me up there. They’re giving me blood thinners and painkillers. I have a roommate, they come in every four hours and I was on a no liquid no food diet because I was having surgery the next morning. They go through the next day and take me to surgery. Essentially they scope my leg and carve out the blood clot, this was a weird procedure. I don’t remember the name of it. It was like thrombose something, but I wasn’t asleep for the procedure. I had to lay on my stomach, with the blood clots it was so painful. They had to have me awake for the procedure, l was in like twilight state, that is what they called it, very weird. You could hear everything I could respond, but I just wanted to sleep.
They removed a 6 inch clot from my leg and put two stents in my thigh area. I honestly didn’t know where the stents were until about a week postop, when I went for a check up. I was more concerned about being able to breathe because it hurts so bad to breathe. They did an ultrasound of my heart to ensure there were no blood clots in that area. After the ultrasound of the heart, they noticed my leg started bleeding. I was on a lot of blood thinners, so my leg was bleeding quite a bit. They went through and wrapped it tight. They tried to get the bleeding to stop and every few hours they were changing the bandages. I had this nurse who just like wrapped it like my leg was sprained and not like a tourniquet, and it was oozing. I actually told her it was oozing. I can feel my leg oozing and she told me it wasn’t, it was my imagination. I said it needs to be tighter. She’s like no it doesn’t, she’s arguing with me. Her boss comes in and I tell him, I can still feel my leg oozing so he did another wrap with an ace bandage. They ended up changing my wrapping every hour because she was not listening to me and with that, I was losing a lot of blood so much so, my hemoglobin was about seven and I ended up getting a pint of blood the next day.
The other problem I had with this nurse was I’m telling her I need to go to the bathroom but I can’t go with the pierwick. I know they gave me something to relax my urethra when I was here before. She told me that there was no such medicine that existed. I told her I was here not even a month ago and I was here for 13 days, I know this medicine exists, I had it. She just kind of brushed me off and it’s like it doesn’t exist. She states we have to do a catheter. She missed the catheter twice. They finally had to get someone else to come in and do the catheter because she missed twice, it was so painful. The next morning, I ended up talking to someone and I don’t want that nurse to touch me. She was awful, I’m going to refuse service. I’m not going to let her touch me. She also blew three veins in my left hand.
My hand is still bruised. Almost a month later, but I can make a fist, which is good. I was told by many doctors how lucky I was, I should not be sitting there. They had med students coming in to see my chart and reviewing my chart. I had zero symptoms. My leg was a little swollen, but I’ve been doing physical therapy, my leg never changed color. Yes they were warm but not anything crazy. My blood pressure was high for me but in normal range so that wasn’t an issue with them. The only symptom I had was the shortness of breath and the chest pains, but that wasn’t until the evening. I did wake up that day with my back hurting, but I’ve been sleeping on a couch for over a month. I just thought it was from the couch and I messed up my back. Still trying to process that I came very close to dying. I mean, I’ve had at least seven doctors tell me that I should not be here.
With this new development, I had to cancel my trip to Australia and New Zealand. I am very sad, but it is for the best considering I almost died. This also put a huge damper on my recovery from breaking my tibia plateau. I am still non-weight-bearing on my right leg. I felt like I had to relearn a whole bunch of stuff because I had five days where I couldn’t do anything. I go back March 30 to the vascular surgeon to see how my leg is and to see how the stents are. I go back April 7 to the orthopedic surgeon, where I hope to be released to go back to work with all of this of course there is more paperwork. So much paperwork my primary care physician is awesome and just put it through June this time. He’s like I don’t think it will be through June, but I’m putting it through June so I won’t have to see him every single time. I’m on blood thinners and Plavix. Maybe three months, maybe the rest of my life who knows. They are trying to get me in to see a hematologist to see if this is genetic or it was just all caused by the accident of falling off the ladder or a little column A and a little of column B. So that’s been life for the past month. I will say I talked to a priest,went to confession and had communion also had the anointing of the sick. It’s hard to come to terms with the fact I came very close to dying. I know people who have died from blood clots, and it’s very scary to think that I almost succumb to that, all because I wanted to paint my kitchen a different color. I am much more positive since this happened or I’d like to think so, just happy to be here. Been working on some ornaments that I’m going to send to Utah to a friend, he is gonna take them with him to Australia.
Dad left the 13th just in time to make it home for the biggest snowstorm to hit my hometown in 138 years. They got 33.5” of snow in 48 hours, my dad finally got to play in the snow. It took almost 9 hours to snow blow there house and the Dari.
I still get text from Work, which makes me feel relevant and I have to be no you can’t call on this. You give them the number and they have to call and they have to arrange it because there is liability when it comes to babysitters. I also finally finished the Starland map that took way too long to do now I just gotta make it pretty.
This is definitely a marathon not a sprint.
Who Are You Calling Crafty? 