The Events Leading Up to My First Pulmonary Embolism

The months leading up to my diagnosis were filled with an incredible amount of stress.

On top of being sick with a lung infection that I couldn’t get rid of, I lost my dad to cancer and had sinus surgery in hopes that it would help decrease my asthma symptoms. I was on high-dose steroids for a prolonged period, which led to significant side effects, including weakening of my bones.

In the early fall of 2014, I went to audition for my church’s Christmas production (think Broadway musical, not Christmas "play"). Unfortunately for me, I took the advice of "break a leg" a little too seriously and left the audition with a broken ankle, broken wrist, and a compression injury to my back.

An MRI revealed more than a sprain

At the time, my wrist injury was the most significant. I underwent surgery a few days after the accident to put a plate in my arm to hold the bones together.

While waiting for my wrist to heal, I was also struggling with my ankle. I was initially diagnosed with a hairline fracture in the talus, but when that didn’t show up on X-rays 3 weeks later, they called the rest of my ankle pain a sprain and sent me on my way. I was in and out of a walking boot (mostly because any time I walked without it, my ankle pain would drastically increase and my ankle would swell up to the size of a softball). Eventually, one of the doctors ordered an MRI of my ankle, which showed that it was a tad more than a sprain.

Preventing blood clots after ankle surgery

I met with a foot and ankle surgeon shortly after the MRI results came back. He agreed that I needed surgery to fix the damage in my ankle. He would remove the scar tissue, place an artificial internal brace where the ligaments should be, and repair the tendon that was split in half. It was a fairly extensive surgery, as there were a lot of things that needed fixing.

The surgery itself went very smoothly, and I was discharged the same day with an order to not put weight through my ankle for 6 weeks and a recommendation to be on high-dose aspirin for 30 days post-surgery to prevent any blood clots from forming in my leg.

A difficult recovery

My recovery was slow and painful. I cannot tell you how difficult it is to not put any weight on one of your legs while still trying to function normally. But I did the best I could with what I had and made as many adaptations as I could.

I went back to work around the 4 to 5 week mark. I don’t remember exactly, but it was about the same time that I was able to stop taking the aspirin every day. The trek from my car to the office was arduous, but my office chair had wheels, and you better believe I took advantage of scooting around the office as much as I could.

Shortness of breath and calf pain

Walking and moving around began getting a lot harder than it should have been. I was getting out of breath really easily while doing almost anything, and I just chalked it up to being immobile and not able to get any kind of exercise done for the previous few weeks. I’m sure my asthma was contributing to my breathlessness, too.

I started having some calf pain; it felt kind of like a charley horse or that it needed to be stretched out really well. I tried to stretch it out a few times a day, but it just wasn’t helping much, and I was sure some of the soreness in my calf was from starting PT again and getting those leg muscles working again after not being used for so long.

Right?

It wasn't my asthma...

Nope! Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I wasn’t deconditioned. Well, I probably was to some degree, but still, that wasn’t my problem. And it wasn’t my asthma, because my inhalers were not helping even the slightest bit. Tight muscles? Sore from starting physical therapy? Nope.

I had developed blood clots in almost every vein in my leg, and the clots had made their way into my lungs...

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