Thursday, May 3, 2007

Wednesday...the diagnosis

Beth woke up at roughly 1:45 in the morning and could not go back to sleep. She was once again having tightness in her chest and suffering from severe nausea from acid reflux. She proceeded to take some mylanta in the attempt to calm the symptoms. Nothing worked. She called the doctor in the middle of the night and attempted to find some answers. Nothing.

She went to work that day and the kids did very well for her. She had tightness all day and the numbness began to get worse by traveling into both hands at this point. In addition, Beth noticed that she began to have shortness of breath, especially when singing, coughing, and other sorts of activities. I picked her up from school and we proceeded to go to an appointment. Upon arrival, Beth began shivering a lot with the other symptoms continuing. We were under the impression that the prozac was the wrong medication since it was a stimulant rather than a depressant type. Our friend strongly urged us to return to the ER . Very reluctantly we did so. Upon our arrival at the ER, we approached it from the standpoint that we were going home and only needed a change of medication, an easy thing.

The doctor gave Beth some GI drink and some adavan in order to calm the symptoms which Beth was having in regards to the stomach acid. They also performed another EKG to check the condition of the heart one more time. The doctor as well wanted to perform a CT scan on her chest in order to make sure that these pains were esophagus related and nothing else. This is where the doctor informed us that Beth had blood clots in her lung. We were stunned and scared.

The doctor assured us that she was at low risk considering the size of the blockage and the timing with which we were able to treat it. They immediately began the blood thinners, which is the only way to treat the condition. The clots they believe were a product of Beth on the Birth control pill. Thankfully, this was our last month anyway. However, possibly combined with this is her being on bed rest and staying in the hospital. Obviously, the thoughts were running through our heads, questioning if this was the issue all along. Unfortunately, there is no way for us to find that out. The plan as we knew it was to have a scan on Thursday to check the legs (where the clots originate) for more clots and to stay on the drip blood thinners for roughly 5 days.

We were very thankful for the friends that came around us after the diagnosis. It was such a blessing to enveloped by this tangible love of Christ.

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