The R.A.N III Experience

That One Time I Got Blood Clots in My Lungs

As you may or may not know,  a little over two weeks ago I ended up in the St. Marks Hospital emergency room.  This all began on Wednesday, November 2nd when I was driving home from Matt and Bobbi’s house after visiting them and baby Avery.  I had this nagging pain on my right side (if you use your fingers and put them on your right side, find your the bottom rib cage bone, just under that that’s the spot) which also wrapped a little bit into my middle back area.  Initially, I thought I had pulled a muscle in my back while working out the previous week as I’ve suffered this injury before and was familiar with the muscle pain in my back while inhaling and exhaling.

The next morning, Thursday the 3rd,  I woke up I instantly realized that my pain had not gone away or lightened up at all but I ignored it and ended up going to work.  At lunch I wound up going to Fashion Place Mall and on the return drive home the pain started getting worse.  By the time I was back at my desk the act of breathing was putting me through unbearable pain.  You know when you go to the doctor and they ask you what your pain level is, one through ten?  Yeah, mine was easily a 9.  At this point, my boss could hear me on the phone with my mom and he knew something was wrong with me.  I told him I needed to go to insta-care, he offered to drive me, but of course I wasn’t about to leave my car downtown so I told him I could drive myself.

When I arrived at the Intermountain Healthcare insta-care office they saw me immediately, I guess having problems breathing surpasses everything else.  The doctor who saw me thought the pain could be one of any in a cornucopia of ailments, like pulled muscles, kidney stones, adult chicken pox, or pulmonary embolisms.  After our talk he sent the nurses in (one of which who was a newbie in nursing school and used me to practice drawing blood on) to collect my blood.  They were looking at my white blood cell count in the first test and then my D-dimer level in the second test.  D-dimer is a product of fibrin degradation, a small protein fragment present in the blood after a blood clot is formed.  The first test was quick to run, the doctor told me my WBC (white blood cell) count was slightly elevated at 11.6.  The D-dimer test takes about 2-3 hours before a result can be interpreted so the doc gave me some prescriptions of pain kills and muscle relaxers (in case the blood results were all normal and we ended up just going with the muscle strain hypothesis) and sent me on my way.

As I left the clinic, I remember hoping it was just a muscle strain but for some reason I felt like that wasn’t the case because the pain was so intense.  While I was at Wal-Mart getting my prescriptions filled the doc gave me a call and told me he had seen the results to my D-dimer test.  A normal maximum level of D-dimer is between 4-500, my level was approximately 1,400.  Not so good, eh?  This prompted the doctor to tell me he would prefer that I get a CT scan to make sure nothing crazy was going on inside me.  I agreed and he set the appointment up at St. Marks Hospital the same day, one hour later.

At St. Marks I ended up having to check into the E.R. due to insurance complications (which I won’t get into because it will make me angry thinking about it).  After an hour in my own E.R. room the x-ray/CT tech came in and got me.  She performed CT scans on both my lower abdomen and my chest area.  Probably another hour after this the doctor came in and told me that I had pulmonary embolisms in both of my lungs, I thought he was joking.  He wasn’t.  I was told I would be on blood thinners for at least 6 months and that I wouldn’t be leaving the hospital today.  Not really what I was expecting.    I was admitted and then a nurse came in and drew 14 viles of blood from me, it was certainly not the last time I would be getting blood drawn either.

For the next two and-a-half days I sat in the hospital and got pumped full of morphine, Loratab, Coumadin, had my blood drawn a total of 20 times, and I even had to endure shots of Lovenx into my stomach.  Finally, around 1 PM on Sunday I was able to be discharged, it was a great feeling leaving that place.  I must say, however, that my nurses and doctor while I was checked in were all really fantastic.

So as it stands right now I am stuck on blood thinners for at least 6 months which takes us into April 2012.  From now til then I have to abstain from extreme physical activity (snowboarding) and drinking a lot of beers, which blows because I like them both.  On the bright side, my friends all have a permanent designated driver for a while.