InsaneJournal

Back from a week at hospital. On Monday, I started noticing pain when I breathed too deeply. It got worse on Tuesday, boy I thought it was just dehydration. Wednesday it got bad enough that the boy drove me to the emergency department, where I spent a night going "ow" and getting x-rays and blood tests, whilst doctors bandied around possible diagnoses of cartilage strain or cracked ribs.

Thursday morning I was to get a CT scan done. I tried to lie flat on the machine, and I could not take a breath. The pain in my back and chest was bad enough that I literally couldn't take a breath of longer than half a second. That test was out, as I'd have to stay still for eight minutes and I couldn't stay still for eight seconds. So I had a different test done that let me sit up, where I could breathe slightly better, and they admitted me that night with a diagnosis of probable pulmonary embolism, or a blood clot in my lung.

Five days, several injections and pills later, and I am home. I have to have a community nurse visit twice a day for a week to take blood and check the levels of various things, to sort out my dose of blood thinners. I'm going to have to be on blood thinners for a while, possibly for the rest of my life -- more medication, not that much of a change, what with the insulin, Lexapro, birth control -- and I need to sort out my weight with more urgency than before. I do not ever want to go through that sort of pain again.

I have so much to catch up on.