I had a bit of a scare this past Saturday. While walking down the street towards my local subway station, I collapsed to the sidewalk, actually passing out for several seconds. Thankfully, my brother Andrew was with me, and he promptly called 911. I was taken to the hospital and after a series of tests was found to have a massive pulmonary embolism—essentially, a blood clot lodged in the pulmonary artery that leads from the heart to the lungs (see diagram).
Diagram of pulmonary circulation. Oxygen-rich blood is shown in red; oxygen-depleted blood in blue. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The clot was located in the “saddle” of the artery, where it branches off to each side, with bits of it extending a ways into the various further branchings in each lung. Obviously, this was a very serious condition, one that very easily could have been fatal if enough blood flow had been blocked.
I was transferred from the ER to the ICU in the early morning hours of Sunday while being given a heavy dose of blood thinner. While the blood thinner doesn’t directly cure the embolism, it halts further clotting and helps the body naturally dissolve the clots. After a great deal of further testing—I nicknamed the nurses “Vampirellas” from all the blood they kept sucking out of me—I was moved out of the ICU into a regular hospital room shortly after midnight Tuesday morning.
Normally, I’d have been kept in the hospital for several more days while they gradually shifted the blood thinner medication from the intravenously administered Heparin to either Coumadin or its generic sibling Warfarin. However, a newer drug called Xarelto was made available to me that doesn’t require as much transition time or follow-on monitoring, so I was allowed to go home Tuesday afternoon.
As for the root cause of the clot, the testing did find clots in my leg (deep vein thrombosis aka DVT, since everything has to have a catchy acronym), and most likely one or more broke loose from there and traveled up through my heart to lodge in the pulmonary artery. Long term, I don’t know yet what will be done to treat the condition. Certainly I will remain on the blood thinners for at least six months or so, and then further testing to determine if clotting is still an issue for me. Other tests may be done to see if there’s a blood disorder or some other treatable condition that’s causing the clots. And, it may well be that no definitive cause will be found, which means I’ll need to continue to be careful about all the things that can lead to thrombosis.
I’m very thankful to have a good outcome, considering the alternatives. More then that, I’m very grateful for the many friends and family members who reached out to me and prayed for me. I felt your support, and it made all the difference to me.
