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Old 03-14-2015, 02:53 PM   #1
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Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Fayetteville, GA, USA
Posts: 3,017
Default Pretty rough week.

Had a pretty rough week here. Basically on Sunday afternoon I had a clot form in the SMT artery, which supplies blood to most of the intestines and bowels. Hurt like the dickens! And not a good place to be medically.

After seeing the first doctor in the ER things went rather quickly. Drank a quart of nasty dye stuff to prep for a CT. Got more dye in the vein during the CT which lit me up like Times Square. And the clot was then obvious to the doctors.

So they rolled me back to interventional radiology and ran a catheter up my femoral artery and essentially squirted "clot buster" all over the clot and dissolved most of it. Went back in 12 hours later and 95% was gone.

The rest of the time was spent rolling around hurting and taking anti-clotting therapy via IV. So it looks like I'm on Coumadin therapy for at least a year. After some time to think about the events of the week I wrote up a synopsis on my Facebook page:

My vocabulary was expanded this week. Some of the new words I learned were:

“superior mesenteric artery”
“thrombosis”
“infarction”
“interventional radiology”
“coumadin, warfarin, heparin, lovenox”
And I became experientially familiar with “morphine, oxycodone.”

I also became more acquainted with “amazing” and “blessed.” In context, when Dr. G___, Dr. F___, and Dr. W___ come into your room and announce “Your recovery has been amazing. You are blessed” and they peek their eyebrows and give a little nod of the head on “amazing” and “blessed” which communicates without words the idea that if you can’t see the hand of God in this then you are blind.


At first I wondered which ORR.net family forum to post under. The recovery has left me unscarred and unscathed. There is a defect in the SMT artery that would tend to cause a clot, but otherwise all my arteries are in fine shape and if a clot is going to form it's going to form there and not in a lung, heart or brain. With the Coumadin a new clot is not likely. So all that is good news.

On the other hand, the experience was rather unpleasant and painful, so I think I'll just leave it here.

Ouch! Let's not go there again.
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