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!