Blood Clot Scare

Oh Sh*t, what a bloody scare!

Last Wednesday I woke up with a pain in my right calf. I didn't think anything of it as I was still comatozed by chemo. My dad picked me up to spend the day with them as I'd not been in close contact with them for a week and by now the risk of catching scarlet fever had gone. So I sat in their garden chatting and then after lunch I went for a 4 hour snooze. When I woke up my calf was really painful and my dad suggested I ring the on-call chemo nurse to see what medication I could take to help ease the pain. Well geez, I explain how I felt, she told me she wanted to speak to a dr and would call back...and with that...10mins later she's telling me to go straight to A&E for a DVT scan!

So my dad and I whizzed down to the hospital in a daze and I thought maybe they were over-reacting to what I thought was just a dead leg from being in my chemo coma on the sofa for the past few days. And once I saw a dr, that's when I started to get frightened.....

We got to the hospital about 4.30pm and they explained that there was no-one to do a DVT scan as the last scan is at 4pm and the next scan was at 9am...the dr is telling me this with a seriously worried look on his face and is wiping his sweaty brow... he stared to think out loud to himself but going back to "there's no-one here to do the scan". Meanwhile I'm turning green with worry wondering why the dr is panicking and why there's no-one around to scan my leg, surly being a huge city hospital and with risks of clots after 4pm there must be someone? surely?

So the dr went off to call another dr and they decide to contact my cancer hospital to see what type of blood thinning injection they can give me whilst I'm undergoing chemo, as I can't have the normal treatment (forgot to mention, this dr can't speak English too well which is making me panic even more as he couldn't spell the cancer hospital and kept asking me the name of it and then was trying to spell it on his hand....which means he'd not heard of the cancer hospital... which means he's never dealt with a cancer patient in Cardiff... are you with me on how worried and stressed I am at this point!)

The next thing I know a Simon Pegg lookalike nurse came in to try to explain to me what's going on as I'm sure he noticed my greeness and eyes scanning the room in fear. He told me that they were worried I had a blood clot in my leg, that there was no-one to do the scan and they weren't sure if they could give me any blood thinning drugs... so basically there was a chance that there was nothing they could do until 9am the next morning... but obviously they couldn't do that, so him trying to help just made me worry even more. I just wanted to scream.

The hub is in South Africa, I couldn't call him and worry him but I was really scared at this point that I had a clot in my leg and from the reaction of the medical staff, this was serious stuff. I started to cry and I could feel my teeth clenching, I couldn't believe what was happening.

Then the 'not so good at speaking English' dr came into the booth and told me that they could give me an injection but they'd have to make it up from measuring my height, weight and then do the maths to see how much of this drug I needed.

Simon Pegg then came in to explain that even if I did have a clot, the injection would see me through until the morning in time for my scan as I was worried (and being overdramatic but they did scare the pants off me!) that I was going to die overnight.

I took the injection, in the stomach, 2 of the f*ckers and they were bloody painful and have left lovely bullet holes in my belly. But it was a great relief to know that I wasn't being sent back home to die of a clot whilst the DVT scanner dr's were prob in the pub (I still can't believe there was no-one until the next morning who could do a DVT scan!! What do we pay our taxes for???)

Well that night I slept about 2 hours then woke up worried that the injection might not have worked and I might die. It was a boiling hot night and I wasn't sure if I was sweating with fear or the heat. Looking back now I know I was being over dramatic but the hospital staff really scared me, and I just kept on thinking 'sods blimin law I die of a blood clot and my hub will hate me forever for making him carry on life as normal and going on the Lions tour'. Things are always so much worse when you're lying in bed worrying!

Anyway, the next morning my parents took me back to the hospital for my scan. I didn't realise it would be a 'top of the leg to toe' scan so I had to strip off which I hate doing as I can be a bit shy with showing a bit of flesh..but anyway... double mortified: as I lay down and the dr removed the paper towel from my waist to do the top of the leg (the very top) scan I noticed that I'd put my thong on the wrong way.... the crotch part was across my thigh and it was all twisted....

I don't know if the dr noticed but that 60 seconds of her performing the scan at the top part of my leg was mortifying! I'd gotten dressed so quickly that morning that I hadn't noticed, I've never done that before and I was so so embarrassed. I tried to cover myself with the blue paper towelling but it wasn't enough. So ashamed :-(

Anyway, there was no clot. Nothing at all. The dr put it down to dehydration and bad circulation and told me to walk around more after chemo instead of just lying horizontal.

Now if only there was a DVT scanning dr available the previous evening, I'd have no worried, not needed the bullethole injections, not had a sleepness night, definitely not had the embarrassing thong incident and saved myself and my parents some serious panic....