What They Are And Who Gets Them.

My First DVT was very unexpected. I had heard that seniors get the blood disorder, but I was only 37years old when I got mine. I didn know anything about them only that they were deadly if untreated. Now they tell you that it is only from sitting in airplanes that are the cause of them and lack of circulation. I can tell you that is not the only case. I got my from a fall. It didn show up until 3 months later. I had no idea what was going on in my veins.

A Deep Vein Thrombosis is deadly if left untreated. For some reason the blood thickens, mostly in the lower part of the body and will for a clot in a vein deep in your body. Mine was just under the knee cap on my left leg. If that clot dislodges it can go to the brain or the heart and it will cause death.

What It Looks Like and What I Feels Like

On the side is a picture of what it looks like after a few hours. These are not my legs and I had my DVT in my left leg. It doesnt take long for it to get this size. It is very painful because the oxygen is not getting to the extremity--your foot. It feels like someone is twisting your foot around to the back of your =leg and it doesn let up. You also experience muscle cramps in this area. It is very painful. Your skim feels like it is going to split open.

My Story

I had the one DVT. Not knowing that was what it was because I was on Prednisone for some other ailment, they thought that it was the medication. They tried to slowly get me off it in a hurry. I think my doctor had his suspicions when I called him and told him that I had to hold on the a broom handle and pull myself across the floor to get to the phone. My leg was that heavy and that big. After fifteen minutes of calling me and hanging up. I did as he told me to do--wait by the phone. Well he called back and told me that I had to get the the ER ASAP! I couldn wait for anything.

Once I got to the ER, I was immediately taken in and put in an ER room to wait for a hospital room to open up. The put an IV in me right away and took me to the Ultra Sound Room. I was rolled back out the the same room I came out of. My daughters were around me as we waited on the Doctor to come and see me. It was before my parents had arrived that he told me that I had a Blood Clot and would have to stay in the hospital for 9 days. I said that was an old people disease. He said that it really wasn and a boy died there a short time ago with a heart attach and he was only in his 20 explained to me that if I moved that the blood clot could break off or dislodge and it could go to my brain or my heart and I would die. It is certainly nothing to be nonchalant about. I finally got a room upstairs and they rolled me up and put me in the bed. I had my feet elevated up past my head. I was not to move at all. Slowly the Heparin Lock went into my veins. Heparin is a drug that stabilizes a blood clot and shrinks it. I have had three different diagnoses with the healing of those. One is that the clot just dries up and goes away. The other one is that it is just pushed up against the vein wall and stays there--but it is much smaller. The last one is that it dissolves completely. I can tell you that it does neither! My leg will still swell in the heat. It will still swell if I sit or stand too long. It took me a very long time, like years, before I could stand for more than 2 hours without my leg swelling. It is very scary! It took me 5 years to get to stand even for the 2 hours.

When I told them that I couldn stay still for longer than a couple of hours they went ahead and gave me Demoral for the pain and to get me to relax and sleep so that I wouldn move. That was great and I slept for 3 days! Then they mixed the Demoral with Valium when I awoke. I had never had Valium before and I was very scared. When the nurse came back in he said that I was holding onto the handrails of the bed like I was holding on to life! He asked me if I had ever taken Valium before and I said no. I told him that I felt like I was floating over the bed about 3 inches and if I moved, I would fall off the bed. They took me off of the Valium right away!

With all this happening and the prognosis and what they had told me I was confident that this would just be a bump in the road. This was not the case.

Your body is a wonderful hard working thing. It can guard against any illness you may have and all kinds of things. It is amazing to say the least! If you don use parts they will atrophy--which means they stop working. It like the saying, you don use it, you lose it I found that out the hard way. First let me tell you about the first time I was to go to the bathroom on my own without a catheter in. I thought everything was fine and that the Heperin Block and me being on Coumadin, a blood thinner, Everything would go back to normal. My leg was not swollen anymore and I was able to move around in the bed.

There are pictures, links and updates on my site HERE [http://hubpages.com/_35sahxpt0lubf/hub/DVT-Deep-Vein-Thrombosis-My-Personal-Story] Be sure to read the comments because they also have inportant information in them.