I know a lot of folks have been following @pasmith‘s updates on me during the last week. I know I’m always curious about what’s going on with my online friends, so I’m going to share the whole story with you guys, since I know some of you want to know, but would never ask. 🙂

Sometime around New Year’s Day, my right calf became painful and swollen. I’ve been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, so I just figured it was one more thing swelling and hurting…no big deal. The issue resolved on its own after a few days, and I went about life as normal.

Tuesday night, as I was heading to bed, I suddenly experienced incredible pain in my chest and shortness of breath. It came on so suddenly and was so intense that I was genuinely scared for my life. I sat on the edge of the bed for a minute, panting and clutching my chest, waiting for it to pass. I was eventually able to get enough breath to finish getting ready for bed, but the chest pain persisted.

I have to say, I played it off as “nothing.” I have enough wrong with me, dammit! I didn’t need one more thing added to the list. Besides, Peter was still laid up with gout and I wasn’t about to drive myself anywhere, lightheaded as I was. I was in full ostrich mode.

I dealt with the chest pain over the next day and a half, and it began to taper off. The shortness of breath persisted, and it remained at a pretty constant level after the initial attack. Walking across the room meant I’d be gasping for air by the time I got there. Peter wanted me to make an appointment with my PCP, and I hedged. I didn’t call her until the next day, the 7th, and her office immediately told me to go to the ER.

I was so sure it was nothing that I took the grocery list and a shopping bag with me, intending to pick up a few things on my way home.

The first thing they did once I got back into the wards was to give me a CT scan. After the doctor reviewed it, she came to me with an expression on her face that said she was about to tell me someone died. I’m pretty sure she thought it was me.

She proceeded to tell me that I had blood clots in my lungs (pulmonary embolism), and that she was amazed that I looked as good as I did for what she saw on that scan. She said that I would need to be admitted to the hospital for a few days for treatment and observation. Talk about unexpected! They started me on an IV anticoagulant. They wanted to transfer me to the University hospital in Worcester, though, since they didn’t have anyone on staff who could perform an emergency procedure if I were to throw another clot.

I stayed in the ER at the University hospital for about 24 hours. They did an ultrasound of my legs, during which they found the origin of the clot (deep-vein thrombosis, or DVT…you’ve heard it talked about on TV, I’m sure). An echo of my heart showed that it hadn’t been affected, which was great news. They finally had a room open up upstairs on my second night there, and I was whisked away from the chaos and clutter of the ER.

Long story just a little shorter, I spent another 48 hours in the hospital room, and they came to draw blood and take my vitals every few hours. During that time, my shortness of breath and chest pain eased and my blood oxygen level returned to its normal range. I was taught how to give myself anticoagulant injections in my belly (which totally sucks ass) and I’m on a varying dose of another anticoag, this time a pill, until the nurses at the Anticoagulation Clinic are satisfied with my bloodwork, and then I can stop the injections. They say I may need to be on the pill for as long as a year, and during that time I’m going to have to be extra careful around things that could bruise or cut me.

In the meantime, I have to undergo some medication changes to get off some drugs that might cause clotting. I foresee some suckage because of that in the future, but I’ll take it. By all accounts, I’m lucky to be here. The type of PE that I had — a large “saddle” embolus, which is a clot that settles in the area where the pulmonary artery splits off to go to the left and right lungs — is usually fatal, often within minutes of the onset of symptoms.

The moral of the story, kids, is that you should practice what you preach: You would want your loved one to go to the ER if they experienced chest pain and shortness of breath, right? No matter how much you think or hope that “it’s nothing,” it might not be. Get medical help right away and be sure to describe any unusual symptoms you may have had in the previous days or weeks.

In an ideal world, I would have called my doctor when my leg was swollen. They could have discovered the clot then and given me anticoags or “clot-busters” to prevent it from causing any serious damage. In a non-ideal but certainly smarter world, I would have called 911 when I had the chest pain and shortness of breath.

It is much, much better to be safe than sorry.