Yesterday I noticed that my right hand was slightly swollen. You really have to look closely to see it. I messaged my surgeon to be on the safe side. The nurse and I traded messages today; she had me send a picture of my hands. She could see the swelling and said she wanted to rule out a blood clot. She didn\u2019t think I had one, especially since I have no pain, but to be safe she said she was trying to get me an appointment with radiology. If she was unsuccessful, she said I would have to go to the ED.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the end of the day, she told me she got an appointment at a UPMC location about 30 minutes north of us (another one to add to my list). Aaron was at work, so Dad drove me. The ultrasound started at my neck and went down to my wrist. The tech repeatedly pressed down on my skin to check the blood flow. Then we waited for the radiologist to look at the results and call my surgeon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The tech called my name and said they recommended I go to the ED in the same building, but he was not allowed to tell me why. He walked us over there, at which point I learned that my surgeon had called Aaron (since he’s been at every appointment with me, she assumed he was with me) and was explaining the results. She then called my phone to loop me and Dad in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I do have a blood clot (DVT) in my arm that was caught early. She told us to tell the ED it was a DVT, which immediately sped things up. The ED doctor explained what was going on and said the treatment is to go on blood thinners for 3-6 months. They have a therapeutic effect within two hours and don\u2019t interact with much. I got my first dose pretty quickly and was discharged shortly thereafter. Dad commented that it was the shortest ED visit he had ever experienced and we agreed that everyone was super nice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As is typical, I\u2019m the outlier. My surgeon said in all her years she had never seen this for my kind of surgery. I always knew I was special!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Feeling grateful tonight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday I noticed that my right hand was slightly swollen. You really have to look closely to see it. I messaged my surgeon to be on the safe side. The nurse and I traded messages today; she had me send a picture of my hands. She could see the swelling and said she wanted to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/fcancer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/fcancer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/fcancer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/fcancer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/fcancer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/fcancer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":347,"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/fcancer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343\/revisions\/347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/fcancer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/fcancer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/fcancer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}