Ch-ch-ch-changes...

Things are a-changing around here, and I think it is for the better.  In the last year or so, my little family has done a lot of changing.  Two employers, a family "emergency" stituation and a personal health emergency. 

I've been with my current employer for four months now and here are some things I've noticed:

• I am treated like an adult.  I am trusted to show up and do my job without the (unjustified) fear that I am somehow scamming the company out of tremendous resources.  My department and my supervisor check in on me minimally, but they are able to do it without paranoia and suspiscion when they do.
• I am appreciated.  I am expected to work hard, and I do.  My team is elated at the things that I am accomplishing with them, and my supervisor is pleased with my progress and abilities.  I was actually told that she hoped she would be able to keep me for a long time, and that I am doing an "awesome" job.
• My new employer is MORE flexible and progressive than the last.  I am working through my health problems and doing my best to be available and productive for work.  I recognize that being new I don't have as many options available with regard to FMLA or my banked paid time off or even short-term disability.  After only four months, they are so willing to offer alternatives and work with me to stay on top of my health and recovery.  I am blown-away and grateful. 
• I am excited to come to work again.  I am being challenged and I am doing work that feels rewarding and interesting.  It may not be perfect, and there are still times in the day when I may wish I was doing something else, but I am overwhelmingly appreciative to be here and enjoying my time working here.  I am actually engaged for the first time in a long time.

Long story short, on the job front, this was a tremendous move. 

Nothing like a little bit of mortality in the morning...

I never expected to be a person with a "serious" medical problem.  I am accustomed to things improving on their own, and to being a healthy person and a quick healer.  The pulmonary embolism came as a total surprise, and I am still learning about it and trying to adjust.  I am not feeling even 80% with it today, but I am out of the hospital and back within finger-range of my keyboard.  So, I've now had a PE (blood clots in the lungs) and they are just hanging out for the next several months while my body tries to kick them out.

Starting last week around Wednesday evening (2/23/11) I noticed I really wasn't feeling well.  I was getting winded just by walking a few dozen feet, I got light headed running up the stairs in the house, and I had a lot of tightness and burning in my chest.  Being a typical Amber-person, I assumed I was just getting some weird kind of chest cold and went along with my life.  I figured I had stuff to do, that it would go away, and that I didn't need to worry about it.  Thursday and Friday were also not great days for me, the burning feeling was getting worse, and taking deep breaths caused a really sharp pain in my lungs.  Once again, I was "busy" and had too much stuff to do to worry about whether or not I was sick.

When I got up on Saturday morning, I had decided that the feeling was not improving, and that I really probably ought to see a doctor about it.  I skipped school, and Shane took me to the after-hours clinic to see a doc.  I described the chest pain, got put in a wheelchair and front-lined into a room to talk to the doc on call.  He took all the typical readings, and while I was complaining about lung stuff, my O2 saturation was outstanding.  My heart rate was racing high (near 120 bpm) and my blood pressure was up a lot also (something like 130 over 90).  After a nebulizer treatment that didn't do much, I went to get a chest xray and a D-Dimer blood panel run. 

I guess when you are having a clot or clotting your body produces D-Dimer, which is a protein by-product of your body trying to break down a clot.  When they measure for it, a measurement of 400 or more is considered high.  I guess my counts came back around 1200-ish.  So, the after-hours doc packed me up, called the ER to let them know I was coming, and told me "not to stop to feed the cats" or anything.

This was about 5 or 6pm Saturday evening (2/26/11) by this point, so we headed to the ER and I was again quickly wheel-chaired and rolled back to a room.  Just a word of advice, if you ever need to get into the ER quicker, chest pain will usually do it.  I guess they weren't impressed or convinced by the results that the Kaiser doctor had sent over, because they took the time to re-do all of the same tests and x-rays that I'd already been through, as well as adding a CAT scan.  And that is when they figured out what was going on.  Within 20 minutes of being wheeled away from the CAT scan they had printed and read the results and the ER doc was in telling me about my blood clots.  One fairly large one in the bottom of the left lung, and two smaller ones near the middle of each lung.

They put Heparin (a blood thinner) in my IV line, admitted me to the hospital proper for the next two days, and the rest is history.  (I had outstandingly wonderful and amazing nurses and doctors the whole time I was in, seriously, bless those people for what they do, they are amazing and underappreciated)

I am currently on blood thinners, and will remain so for a minimum of 6 months.  Apparantly they don't do anything to actually "bust" the clots up, that is a misnomer.  I'm doing self-injections of a Heparin-like drug for the next week, and this drug works right away to thin the blood and prevent future clotting, but it doesn't have good lasting power, so it has to be done twice daily.  In addition to that, I'm taking Warfarin(Coumadin) which has to accumulate a sort of therapeutic stock-pile in the body before it can be used alone.  Once those levels are stable, I can stop the injections.

I had a handful of things that could potentially be family risk factors, and despite the fact that I myself have been pretty darned healthy overall, when those risk factors combined with my taking the pill for birth control, I just turned into one of those neat, statistical anomolies that develops clots.  There is not really any one thing that caused it, but we are thinking that since I had just started the pill a month ago, that might be the factor that pushed it over the edge.

So what does this mean for me?  Well, I can't play rugby or roller derby for the foreseeable future, because I'm on blood thinners.  It means I am on a no "vigorous" exercise restriction for a month or so.  It also means I'm pretty definitely done with babies, which is not a decision I was 100% ready to make.  But with all of the possible risks associated with it going forward, it's probably better for everyone involved.  I could end up on these forever, or it could just be a one-time anomaly that was precipitated by the extra estrogen in the pill.  Family members, now that I've had clotting, I could unfortunately be a potential "family risk-factor" for you guys in clotting, depending on how close we are, so it may be something to keep in the back of your mind.


What else does it mean?  I guess not much.  There is not a ton medically that is done for this (beside the meds and the regular blood draws), but it doesn't really preclude things from going on mostly the way that they have before.  Outside of residual tenderness right now, and still getting winded pretty quickly, I am feeling a lot better.  I'm feeling like I can do some normal stuff and think I am actually surprisingly well.  My stamina is crap right now, but things mostly go on. 

And I guess that is the way it always is.  Life goes on and you go on with it.