Well, I have now been home for over a week, and am starting to make progress. My weight dropped to a max of 14 # loss, and is now leveling out. I can finally start eating, but not everything I want yet. I could not eat anything for 5 days, and then after that it was just toast and bananas. It started out Sunday March 24. 5AM. I just had gotten up to go to the bathroom. No changes. Heading to the sink, when all of a sudden it felt like I got hit in the right side with a baseball bat, and fell to the ground. Then the vomiting started. The pain eased up following this, but then the next 3 hours it kept coming in waves, and more frequent. We were to go run with the run club at 7AM, and I told Sarah to go. I thought I just came down with the flu. She had her phone with her, and at 7:40 I called, and told her to come home to take me to the ER. I could not take the pain anymore. We made our way in, and had labs, CT scan of my abdomen, thinking then it was my appendix. The ER doctor came in to tell us my appendix was fine, but I infarcted my right kidney. That means the blood flow was cut off to the kidney by a clot, and it looked already at that point that I had lost 90% of my right kidney. Next thing is we are in the ambulance to SF (Fast!) to the vascular surgeon at Avera Heart Hospital. We do not have a vascular surgeon in Watertown. This surgeon literally met me in the garage of the hospital as they were taking me out of the back, and telling me all of the ramifications of this, and if there was going to be a chance of saving anything of my kidney, we need to go to the cath lab now and try to remove the clot. Away we went! He was able to remove some of the clot, and then I had a “clot buster” infused through my femoral artery for the next 27 hours, having to lay flat on my back and not move at all! That was beyond word description. I hope to never have to do that again.
This was the picture at the beginning with the clot in my right kidney. Not a lot of blood was flowing through.
This was my kidney after 27 hours of the “clot buster” TPA. I had improved blood flow quite a bit. It helped. I don’t know yet how much it helped…time will tell. But for now I have something of a functioning right kidney.
So how did this happen? All that time I had laying flat on my back helped bring it to light. We had gone to Jamaica the 3rd week in February, so we had a long flight. Also, I was wearing a night splint for my right foot to help with my plantar fasciitis. Well, between the 2, it was enough immobility for me to create a clot with in my right leg. I had pain for a few days after we returned, but no swelling. Usually there is swelling with a clot. At any rate, I thought it was muscle, and kept running, biking, swimming…all of my usual daily things. So, several tests later, they found I had a clot in my leg, and also a defect in my heart called a Patent Foramen Ovale: PFO. It was present since birth, but no issues…until now. What happens with the PFO is you can have what is referred to as a “paradoxical embolus”. The blood clot moved up from my leg, to my heart, and from there is very common to go to the lungs, and you have a pulmonary embolus. If you have a PFO, the clot moves from one chamber, the right atrium, through to the left atrium, and back out through the arterial system…to lodge somewhere else. By far and away the most common is presentable by having a stroke–up to 75% of the time. In my case, going to the kidney, it occurs 1% of the time. 1%!!! I guess I feel lucky. I have 2 kidneys, but only one head. This could have resulted in far more significant problems. But now the PFO had to be fixed, or it would keep happening!
They have a device that they deploy into the defect of my heart to fill the gap of this PFO. This is what it looks like.
This is what is looks like in a diagram of the heart closing the PFO. Thank God for modern medicine. This device going through the femoral vein in my leg to my heart first began undergoing trials for use in 2012. If this would have happened prior to then, I would have had my chest opened up in order to fix it. Now it was an hour procedure, and if everything went well, home the next day!
This is how it looks in me! It worked! Other than getting rid of the nausea and vomiting, and trying to gain strength, it was a matter of time for it to heal. I am currently on multiple meds, including multiple blood thinners for awhile. I can walk, but no aerobic activity for minimum of a month, but have been told once this all heals up, I can run marathons again if I want too! What am I going to be able to do running with no hole in my heart anymore? I am learning to be on the other side…the patient side. It is very humbling!
I appreciated all of the texts, emails, notes, cards while gone. Jill and Tim Makepeace had these cupcakes delivered. Sarah and the kids loved them, and I saved one for me later to have, but just could not eat anything with the nausea and vomiting. The nurses taking care of me got to enjoy the rest, so then they kept an even closer eye on me after that! My consecutive streak came to an end, but I started a new one. It started off last Sunday walking 1/4 of a mile…1/4 of a mile!!! This after biking 30 miles and running 3 miles the day prior to all of this happening. I am now up to 1 mile walking, which I will hold for awhile. It wipes me out. I have had time to reflect on the good things in my life, what truly is important to me, and how lucky I really was! I am here! Keep moving everybody!
Dr. Dan
Consecutive Exercise Day of my next streak: Day 8
