A pain in the......foot?

After dealing with CF for nearly 30 years I've developed a tendency to undermine any health concern that isn't related to my lungs. A broken arm? No worries, throw a cast on it. Sprained ankle? Ice it. Fever, migraine, nausea? There's a pill for that.

This logic always seemed pretty reasonable to me: if it's not going to threaten my ability to breathe, I'm not going to waste my time worrying about it.

So when I started to experience swelling in my feet and legs this spring I was quick to attribute it to the high dosage of prednisone that I was on at the time. Then came the bruising, which I also wrote off as being a part the nasty reality of long-term steroid use.

And so I went about my daily business, bruised and swollen, for nearly three months.

As it turns out, this may have been a poor decision on my part. It wasn't until the pain from the swelling in my legs became so overwhelming that I could barely walk that I finally decided to book an ultrasound appointment. 

I knew the news was bad when half way through the ultrasound examination the technician got up and rushed out of the room, leaving me alone, pantless, and a little confused. When he returned he handed me a piece of paper that had been folded in thirds, put in an envelope, and stapled shut, rendering it unreadable. He then told me to go see my doctor right away, and that if she wasn't available to go immediately to emergency.

Minor tangent: if you are a medical professional I would highly suggest you DO NOT utilize this approach when giving your patients news unless your goal is to cause a massive coronary or a panic attack. After an hour of waiting (my mind racing over the endless list of self-created worse-case scenarios) my doctor finally arrived.

The bottom line: the pain I was experiencing was because a series of blood clots had made themselves at home in my left leg. The threat was that these clots could (or potentially already had) spread into my lungs, heart, and possibly even my brain, causing everything from a stroke, to a heart attack. 

The treatment: IV antibiotics to stop any infection as well as self-injected heparin to thin my blood thereby halting the formation of any new clots. The long term treatment involved being on oral blood thinners for a period of up to 12 months.

The good news: after being on treatment for a 6 days I seem to be responding well. The pain in my leg has diminished quite a bit, the clots have not spread, and I am finally back in the office (you'd be surprised how badly you yearn for work and routine after sitting at home/in a hospital for a week). 

The bad news: I currently look like a month-old plum. Seriously, whoever decided that blood thinning medication should be given as an injection must have been a real comedian.

So at the end of the day I suppose there is really one lesson to be learned here:

When your wife tells you to get your ass to the hospital (even if it's just for a swollen foot)....do it.