1 in 2000.

This is the statistical likelihood of women using birth control to be hospitalized from getting a blood clot. So if you know me, you now know one person who has been hospitalized for this very reason.

Scary stuff. I am under 30. I don't smoke. I am not obese. I am fairly healthy. And here I have been in the hospital for 5 days with a blood clot in my leg that managed to also become a pulmonary embolism.

I guess I just want to warn all of the women I know that it is possible to get blood clots from the pill. Based on those of you who have told me that you know someone else that has experienced this same problem, it seems that this is more common that the stats say.

I am so grateful that there are people in my life that told, no forced me, to do something about the pain in my leg. They wouldn't let me blow it off. They told me to get help and thankfully, I listened. If you are currently on birth control, please listen to your body. You never know when something could be terribly wrong.

According to this site, one way to remember the warning signs is ACHES which stands for:

Abdominal pain
Chest pain
Headache
Eye problems
Severe localized leg pain.

Notify your doctor right away if you have any of these symptoms.

I personally had abdominal pain, headache and severe localized leg pain.

http://www.nbc6.net/health/5421876/detail.html

Hospital

It would seem that Daniel and I were due for one of our yearly visits to the ER. It has, afterall, been almost a year since Daniel's last fiasco involving a table saw...

Here is a recap of this week for me...
Sunday night around 10 pm I had severe abdominal pain, but went to bed hoping to sleep it off. Around 1:30 I woke up in even worse pain. After doing some internet research, I took a bath which temporarily relieve said pain. Soon after I was sitting in the hallway crying. After a call to Daniel's dad, we were on our way to the ER. The ER didn't really have a definitive answer for why I was in pain. They sent me home with a pain killer prescription and orders to rest.

Monday was a day of rest for me and I felt fine.

Tuesday I went to work feeling fine. Sometime after lunch I began to experience pain in my right foot and calf muscle. It really felt like a leg cramp, so I ignored it. Tuesday night brought more pain. I tried calling my sister for advice. When she didn't answer, I sent her an email listing all of the reasons I felt that I was "falling apart."

Sometime early Wednesday morning I woke up in severe pain in my leg. I wrapped my heating pad around it and tried my best to sleep. I woke up for work around 7:30 and found that I could not stand up. The pain in my right leg was excruciating. Daniel helped me into the shower and the pain subsided. Daniel made me call his dad who told me that he thought I had a blood clot and to see a doctor immediately.

I called my friend, LaCinda, who referred me to her sister Kathy. Kathy told me to walk in to her clinic. She agreed that she thought that I had a blood clot in my leg and referred me to an imagining center for an ultrasound of my leg.

After the ultrasound, they told me to go immediately to the ER. The ER checked me in and soon had me taking a CT Scan where they discovered the clot in my leg had broken and small parts of it were now in my lung. Then they left me to hang out for 3 hours while they found me a room to check into. By 11 pm I was finally checked into the hospital and in my own room.

Last night I felt very much in the dark with little communication, but today my nurse has been much more informative. They finally let me know that any danger seems to have passed. They are keeping me for observation while they transition me from injections to a pill. The pill has to build up in my system so I am hanging out at Presbyterian Hospital while they transition me from one medication to the other.

The pain in my leg has subsided substantially. I can get up and move around and I no longer have to be inverted in bed. The biggest thing I may suffer from is boredom. I am enjoying the extra time to read and cable television is a nice (albeit expensive) benefit.