*Where it all Began"

Ok so lets go back aways, to June 18th to be exact. I give birth to my beautiful new daughter, Rachel. I have her via C-section, which was definately NOT planned, seeing as how Ive always been terrified of the thought of having one. But she was breech, and after the Drs tried (unsuccessfully) to turn her, C-section was my only option left.

The surgery went fine, and we went home 2 days later and bonding began. Everything was going fine until about 2 weeks later, I started feeling pain in my left calf. I thought nothing of it at first, thought I had just overdone it that day. Then the pain progressively got worse over the next few days, to the point where it was throbbing, and I could hardly walk. So i go make an Appt at my Gyno to get it checked out. The dr comes in, looks over my leg and says it looks like theres nothing wrong with it. She tells me its probably just a calf sprain, and sends me on my way.



So i go on about my normal life, and deal with the leg pain by taking my 800mg of Ibprofen that had been prescribed to me after the C-section. Then one evening Arnold and I are sitting on the couch at his parents' house, and im feeding Rachel. I had been having chest pains that evening, but thought it was just heartburn or something like that. Then they started to get worse, and all of a sudden i felt very strange, numb and tingly all over my body. I told Arnold he needed to call someone NOW. So he called 911 and the paramedics came over and checked me out. They said they couldnt find anything wrong with me.



Arnold decided to take me to the ER to get checked, just in case. I waited in the ER for a good hour or so. I had my mom, dad, brother, Father-in-law and Arnold all waiting with me which helped keep me calm. The whole time i kept telling my mom something just wasnt right. No one seemed to believe me up until this point that anything was wrong with me, ive always been so healthy, not to mention im still pretty young.



Anyway, they finally got me into a room and ran all sorts of tests on me. Everything checked out fine. Then the Dr said he wanted to do just one more test on me to be sure i was ok.. a CT scan. So i went to get one done. It was awful.. they give you this medicine that makes your body feel very warm all over, and puts pressure in your bladder. And while youre inside the machine youre supposed to hold your breath and not breathe, which is hard for me. But anyway, when the test was over I went back to the room to wait on the results with Arnold. A few mins.later the DR comes in and said that they found blood clots in my lungs. To be specific, he said my "lungs were showered with clots." Well of course then I freak out. I ask him if im going to be ok. He said calm down, its a good thing we caught this. A few more days and you could have died. But we're going to treat it now and youll be fine.




So...... basically that "calf sprain" had been a blood clot in my leg all along, and I had been walking around for weeks not knowing, and the clot had broken loose and traveled to my lungs. It split into lots of small ones, so they said that was a good sign that they probably wouldnt block anything off, like my oxygen.. or mess with my heart. The dr seemed irate that the Gyno had failed to give me a leg ultrasound that day I went in with the pain... that would have caught the clot and I would have never ended up in the hospital.. and had these serious issues to now deal with. It was a shock to everyone.