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A Small Matter of Life and Death
Happy New Year, everyone.
I am home now, taking a day to recuperate after a three-day stay in the hospital--an unnerving and unpleasant experience.
Why was I in the hospital?
Let's go back about a month.
The family and I were taking a walking tour of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's annual light show. It's about an hour and fifteen minutes end to end, so you need to sit down and rest once in a while. But I wasn't sitting down. I was worked up (for a variety of reasons), so while my wife and kid sat down, I paced relentlessly. By the end of the tour, I felt something pull in my right leg; it was a severe muscle strain or a small tear in the calf muscle.
I was hobbled for a while and the leg was swollen. But I didn't think it was a big deal; I'd dealt with strains and tears before. You keep off the leg as best you can, elevate it, and take an ibuprofen for any occasional pain. And for the most part, it worked: the strain or tear or whatever healed, and I regained full mobility. But here's the thing:
The swelling never went down.
After the new year, it started to dawn on me that the muscle strain/tear/whatever might be covering another condition--water in the tissues (edema) or, worst case scenario, a blood clot. So this Saturday, I finally had an ultrasound to find out what was happening in there...
It's a blood clot. Deep vein thrombosis.
If you're not familiar with DVTs, they are a tricky, highly dangerous condition. Blood clots don't necessarily disable you and sometimes, they aren't even painful. But a clot can come loose from the leg and travel straight to the lungs or heart. It could be--potentially--fatal.
The advice from my doctors? Go to the hospital. NOW. So I did. I checked into the emergency room at NYU/Langone in Brooklyn. I spent a full day on a stretcher squashed against a nurse's station in the hallway. In that first stretch, I frankly had no idea how long I would be there. I had read or heard that sometimes, a hospital would keep you for weeks while they safely wore down the clot.
On Sunday, they gave me a proper room in the ER and started me on IV drips of saline solution and blood thinners. It severely limited my movements--not great when I had to go to the bathroom--but by Monday morning, I could feel the combination working. The swelling was going down. I was confident that I'd be released Monday afternoon, and put on pills on an outpatient basis.
But they threw me a curveball. Monday afternoon, I was transferred to a semi-private room upstairs. They attached me to a heart monitor. I wondered what the heck was going on: is my condition worse than I thought? Is my "short" hospital visit just beginning? (I was trying not to panic.)
Fortunately, my original assumption turned out to be right: I was started on 10 mg of Equilis and I was set to be released on Tuesday morning...
Then, the inevitable insurance foulup kept me just a little while longer. The hospital didn't have the right insurance information. My wife's ordinarily bulletproof insurance package didn't cover the drug. My wife had to race to a local pharmacy next to the hospital before they closed at six. (Six?! Who closes at six?! Walgreens closes at ten!)
Anyway, I got the pills I needed--no cost for the first month. I was released at 7pm, and we drove
through the rainstorm to finally, FINALLY arrive home.
Home. My couch. My bed. The cat (who apparently was looking for me out the window for days). I am so happy to be back.
I'm not out of danger, though. I need to take blood thinners for at least a month or two, to make sure the clot is gone completely (and doesn't come back). I have to be on guard for side effects and I can't cut myself, because (as one person put it) I would "bleed like a motherfucker."
On the plus side (trying to be optimistic here), my blood pressure and heart are pretty good for a guy my age. I saw a ton of movies in my semi-private room: Elemental, Matrix Resurrections, Super Mario Bros., Quantumania and Dungeons and Dragons. (Some of them were good!)
But mostly, I'm alive. And I'm home.
I am home now, taking a day to recuperate after a three-day stay in the hospital--an unnerving and unpleasant experience.
Why was I in the hospital?
Let's go back about a month.
The family and I were taking a walking tour of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's annual light show. It's about an hour and fifteen minutes end to end, so you need to sit down and rest once in a while. But I wasn't sitting down. I was worked up (for a variety of reasons), so while my wife and kid sat down, I paced relentlessly. By the end of the tour, I felt something pull in my right leg; it was a severe muscle strain or a small tear in the calf muscle.
I was hobbled for a while and the leg was swollen. But I didn't think it was a big deal; I'd dealt with strains and tears before. You keep off the leg as best you can, elevate it, and take an ibuprofen for any occasional pain. And for the most part, it worked: the strain or tear or whatever healed, and I regained full mobility. But here's the thing:
The swelling never went down.
After the new year, it started to dawn on me that the muscle strain/tear/whatever might be covering another condition--water in the tissues (edema) or, worst case scenario, a blood clot. So this Saturday, I finally had an ultrasound to find out what was happening in there...
It's a blood clot. Deep vein thrombosis.
If you're not familiar with DVTs, they are a tricky, highly dangerous condition. Blood clots don't necessarily disable you and sometimes, they aren't even painful. But a clot can come loose from the leg and travel straight to the lungs or heart. It could be--potentially--fatal.
The advice from my doctors? Go to the hospital. NOW. So I did. I checked into the emergency room at NYU/Langone in Brooklyn. I spent a full day on a stretcher squashed against a nurse's station in the hallway. In that first stretch, I frankly had no idea how long I would be there. I had read or heard that sometimes, a hospital would keep you for weeks while they safely wore down the clot.
On Sunday, they gave me a proper room in the ER and started me on IV drips of saline solution and blood thinners. It severely limited my movements--not great when I had to go to the bathroom--but by Monday morning, I could feel the combination working. The swelling was going down. I was confident that I'd be released Monday afternoon, and put on pills on an outpatient basis.
But they threw me a curveball. Monday afternoon, I was transferred to a semi-private room upstairs. They attached me to a heart monitor. I wondered what the heck was going on: is my condition worse than I thought? Is my "short" hospital visit just beginning? (I was trying not to panic.)
Fortunately, my original assumption turned out to be right: I was started on 10 mg of Equilis and I was set to be released on Tuesday morning...
Then, the inevitable insurance foulup kept me just a little while longer. The hospital didn't have the right insurance information. My wife's ordinarily bulletproof insurance package didn't cover the drug. My wife had to race to a local pharmacy next to the hospital before they closed at six. (Six?! Who closes at six?! Walgreens closes at ten!)
Anyway, I got the pills I needed--no cost for the first month. I was released at 7pm, and we drove
through the rainstorm to finally, FINALLY arrive home.
Home. My couch. My bed. The cat (who apparently was looking for me out the window for days). I am so happy to be back.
I'm not out of danger, though. I need to take blood thinners for at least a month or two, to make sure the clot is gone completely (and doesn't come back). I have to be on guard for side effects and I can't cut myself, because (as one person put it) I would "bleed like a motherfucker."
On the plus side (trying to be optimistic here), my blood pressure and heart are pretty good for a guy my age. I saw a ton of movies in my semi-private room: Elemental, Matrix Resurrections, Super Mario Bros., Quantumania and Dungeons and Dragons. (Some of them were good!)
But mostly, I'm alive. And I'm home.
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