One crazy month, one crazy story. Introducing myself.

Hi,
My name is Christina, and I just found out this past Thursday that I have a DVT in my right leg, just behind the knee. Its a totally crazy story, but I'd like to share.

Back when I was pregnant, I had a superficial vein clot in a vericose vein, on the left leg. This was back in 2007. The clot took care of itself, but left me with nasty/painful vericose veins. On September 25th, of this year, I had those veins stripped. This was meant to be an easy outpatient surgery, that left me with a nasty staph infection (aka- cellulitus) in that leg, along with a hematoma that needed to be evacuated surgically. I was in the hospital for 3 days. The infection probably wouldn't have happened had the surgeon listened to me, and didn't blow me off when I called (first), then saw him, telling him of horrible pain (the worst I've ever had- worse than my natural back labor childbirth, to be quite honest) and a 102 fever.
After the evacuation surgery of the hematoma, I complained of a sharp pain in my right calf. The surgical resident felt it a bit, and said it was probably compensation pain from putting so much pressure on it. I called the doc after I got home, and the same answer, besides, how could I possibly get a DVT after everything else? (I'm that 1% of people who get those "rare" side effects, apparently)

I returned to work, with my right leg hurting worse than my left, and swollen. I walked around on it for almost 2.5 weeks!!! My school secretaries (I'm a teacher) looked at it, and forced me to call the doctor. I did, only to shut them up. To be honest, I was so tired of doctors and hospitals, I wanted to ignore everything. Thankfully, I did listen to them. I had the doppler on Thursday, and by that night I was hooked up to a heparin drip and am now giving myself 2 injections of Lovenox per day for 7 days.

I am freaked out that I have the DVT, and that if I kept on ignoring it, I could have died. My daughter is only 20 months old and I am not ready to go- especially that way.

Thanks for reading through this. I hope you could follow it!

Hi Christina

Sorry to hear of your ordeal! Reading through your story brought back memories of my diagnosis. When my ankle was swollen and my leg had red blotches and burnt like hell, I was diagnosed with Cellulites. When it didn’t go away, I went to the hospital and saw a Specialist there who agreed with the diagnosis of Cellulites. All in all a month later I was back at the hospital and the same Specialist sent me for a Doppler and admitted me with confirmed DVT.

What blows my mind is that I walked around for a month like that which included a holiday trip to the coast where I did loads of walking (as much as I could due to the pain but way too much for someone with new DVT) as well as did a long car trip to the coast and back. All this while having DVT! This must be why I still have an achy leg two years later – there must have been such damage done to the vein! I’ve also since got varicose veins on the DVT leg.

So I totally understand that you are freaked out about having DVT and did not know it at first. It is so often misdiagnosed which is the scary part!

The good news is that you are at least aware of this now and are being treated. How long do you need to be on anticoags? Did the doctor say why he/she thinks you got the DVT?

Welcome to the Forum and look forward to chatting to you.

Regards
Madeline