I was sipping my second cup of coffee the other morning when I got this call: “Hi Jenny, this is Dr. Menon’s office. You need to go to the ER immediately. You have a pulmonary embolism.”
Pulmonary embolism? Isn’t that the thing where the old guy down the street gets shepherded away in an ambulance on a Wednesday afternoon? “Old Mr. Wiggins was such a kind man, and a terrific gardener,” the neighbors say, “but he was 90, after all, so an embolism isn’t exactly a surprise.”
For me, though, a PE just didn’t make sense. I’m in my mid- (to late-) 50s—okay, not young, but not “PE old.” I’m petite and eat healthy food, I don’t drink or smoke, I’m active, I’m young at heart. I sit like a kid, criss-cross applesauce. I walk everywhere, I stay limber. I limit myself to binging 3 episodes of something at a time (I might even do a little yoga while watching). I wear compression socks on long flights. So, what’s all this? How did I end up in the ER where, scarily enough, during triage I beat out most of the other people waiting there and was whisked to a room for tests?
How it started: I’d had these weird pains on and off over the last couple of months. They jabbed a little, on the right side of my chest, then later on the left. Sometimes the jab was more jabby than other times. I also felt strange sensations in my neck and even my jaw. But the pains were fleeting. My breathing was fine. Inhaling didn’t make the pain worse. My left arm didn’t hurt. Nothing else was wrong. And, now knowing that aging brings on all kinds of aches and pains for no good reason, I was tempted to chalk it all up to Father Time’s mean streak. (Mother Time would never be so cruel, am I right?)
But my tolerance for pain isn’t great. I’ve had a lot of it, and now when I feel something new I get a bit paranoid. I finally saw my regular doctor, who said it wasn’t a heart attack; she thought first it was musculoskeletal, or inflammation in my connective tissue or lung tissue. As someone with autoimmune disease(s), inflammation is my constant companion, so this made some sense. These were not deadly issues, just things to identify and rectify.
The pain eased for a little while, so my doc suggested we wait and see if it went away fully. It didn’t.
So, she ordered a CT scan and I leisurely booked it. Just to be sure, you know. Nothing to see here.
And then comes the call. Get thee to an ER. Now.
It turns out I have multiple embolisms (emboli? yeah, that’s got to be right) in my lungs, both sides. They show up on the CT as little white drops across black film, like splattered milk. I’m surprised at how many there are. More than 10! Some of them look like shooting stars, streaks of light coming to an abrupt end.
And a PE is already the bad result of something: “Blood clots can cause PE, a potentially deadly lung condition, yadda yadda.” I prefer for my problems to be at least two steps removed from the worst thing.
During the 2-day hospital stay the docs found no other clots—nothing in the legs or groin where clots often form. Where and why mine came to be remains a mystery that my hematologist said we may not solve. I’ve had theories, of course, which my doctors are always thrilled to consider. My diet has included a rather excessive amount of vitamin K lately, for example. K encourages clotting. Did I do this to myself with blueberries, kale, and Keto cacao breakfast bars? There may also be a genetic component, although my mom’s PE (yep, she had one) was probably due to a medication error…a story for another time.
Probably, says the hematologist, this is just my own inflammation-prone system doing what I do best — fighting my own body from within. What scares me is so many people I know would have ignored such inconsistent pains longer than I did. My symptoms weren’t big enough to suggest PE. Usually people have severe pain, trouble breathing, stuff like that. But where there are clots, there are bound to be more clots soon enough. One of them could be the big one that zooms to the heart or brain with deadly flourish. Ta da! Final curtain.
It’s not really a grand epiphany, but here is what this essay is about: Listen to your body. Listen hard. This is actually the second time I almost talked myself out of pursuing a “weird pain” and would have ended up sorry later. (Ask me about my autoimmune pancreatitis.) And while I’m not happy to be on yet another super drug (read: friggin’ expensive and life-limiting) to keep me upright, I’m grateful they exist. Very grateful.
Who among our readers has had a surprise of this sort, something that made you realize you have crossed an age and health threshold that you had hoped was still far off? Probably quite a few. Because think about it: The hoedown between our genetics and toxic exposures and poor, sugary diets and bad decisions and the luck of the draw makes each of us an experiment, a subject in the study of what the body can take. At some point, it can take no more.
As long as we’re still ducking the onslaught, though, remember how good it is to be here. Regardless of all the things happening right now, life is still the best option going. Today, settling into my newfound fragility, I’m sitting on my porch, coffee in hand, listening to the birds chatter. I’m recalling how much I love spring and breathing with relief that I’m here to enjoy it.
Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash
>> Listen to your body. Listen hard.
A few weeks ago my wife was on the receiving end of a car running a stop sign at a high rate of speed. After a few days in the trauma unit, she was sent home and as a “going-away-present-to-myself” sort of thing, she got a gluten-free chocolate muffin from the hospital bakery. This was in the morning. By afternoon she was having feelings in her gut that felt just like she had had gluten. Pain, visible bloating. She wanted to blow it off. “That muffin must have had gluten,” she insisted. This seemed different to me. And there was the recent accident. But she kept insisting this was gluten all the way into the ER, even telling the doctor this as the CT was starting at 11pm. By midnight she was in the OR being prepped for emergency surgery. So yes. Absolutely listen to your body. Listen so hard that you also let your loved ones listen too because sometimes they see things differently than you. (BTW, she’s OK now. But it was a good thing we checked.)