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Jan. 16th, 2006 03:58 pmDecember, 1993. Ray and I were living in a rented semi-detached house in Gillingham, Dorset, England. (My inclination was to label it a 'little' house--and it felt little to me--but whenever we had visitors they always commented on how large it was.) I started having a very sharp and intense pain in my left side just behind the lowest ribs. After several nights having to sleep propped up on the sofa, and the pain only getting worse, Ray took me one morning to the emergency center at Shaftesbury Hospital. (It wasn't called "emergency". I can't remember what it was, maybe "accident center", but I remember taking note of another difference in British vs American usage.) They looked me over and took a chest x-ray.
After the chest x-ray showed something ominous, I was booked for another test, this one at Salisbury Hospital since Shaftesbury was not equipped for it. I can't remember what that one was called, but it involved me drinking some radioactive liquid and them looking at my insides with a big machine. Anyway, I went to the hospital in the morning, had the test, and was told, "You're staying here." There was a blood clot in my left lung.
I spent five or seven days in a ward at Salisbury Hospital, the first several of them on enforced bed rest with intravenous heparin. I kept complaining about being on bed rest because the night before I'd come for my test, I'd been out dancing at the wedding reception of Douglas and Wendy Adams. (Not that Douglas Adams, of course.) I'd been lucky, not smart; all that exercise could easily have dislodged the clot and sent it to the heart or the brain, and I wouldn't have been there to whinge about it. A couple days into my stay I had a venogram: dye is injected between the toes and xrayed. There were also clots in my left leg. They kept asking me if I'd had pain in my legs, but I hadn't. Nor had I had any prolonged period of inactivity "such as long airplane flights". The only known risk factor I did have was that I was on the Pill. I had been for years, but I did wonder whether the pills I was getting in the UK were somehow different from the ones I'd had back home. Never did find out. Maybe now with the new tests I'll find out exactly what was going on.
My hospital stay included the day on which we were supposed to fly home to the US for Christmas. I did get out in time for Christmas itself, and we were invited to spend the day with a coworker and her family: Christmas pudding, crackers, silly family games and the whole kit-n-caboodle.
For six months or so afterward, I was on daily doses of warfarin (known in the US by its brand name Coumadin), and made weekly or bi-weekly treks up the hill to Shaftesbury Hospital for blood coagulation testing. I hadn't thought of that little blue-green office for years, until talking to Dr. Paul on Friday brought all this back to me.
After the chest x-ray showed something ominous, I was booked for another test, this one at Salisbury Hospital since Shaftesbury was not equipped for it. I can't remember what that one was called, but it involved me drinking some radioactive liquid and them looking at my insides with a big machine. Anyway, I went to the hospital in the morning, had the test, and was told, "You're staying here." There was a blood clot in my left lung.
I spent five or seven days in a ward at Salisbury Hospital, the first several of them on enforced bed rest with intravenous heparin. I kept complaining about being on bed rest because the night before I'd come for my test, I'd been out dancing at the wedding reception of Douglas and Wendy Adams. (Not that Douglas Adams, of course.) I'd been lucky, not smart; all that exercise could easily have dislodged the clot and sent it to the heart or the brain, and I wouldn't have been there to whinge about it. A couple days into my stay I had a venogram: dye is injected between the toes and xrayed. There were also clots in my left leg. They kept asking me if I'd had pain in my legs, but I hadn't. Nor had I had any prolonged period of inactivity "such as long airplane flights". The only known risk factor I did have was that I was on the Pill. I had been for years, but I did wonder whether the pills I was getting in the UK were somehow different from the ones I'd had back home. Never did find out. Maybe now with the new tests I'll find out exactly what was going on.
My hospital stay included the day on which we were supposed to fly home to the US for Christmas. I did get out in time for Christmas itself, and we were invited to spend the day with a coworker and her family: Christmas pudding, crackers, silly family games and the whole kit-n-caboodle.
For six months or so afterward, I was on daily doses of warfarin (known in the US by its brand name Coumadin), and made weekly or bi-weekly treks up the hill to Shaftesbury Hospital for blood coagulation testing. I hadn't thought of that little blue-green office for years, until talking to Dr. Paul on Friday brought all this back to me.
