Never a Dull Moment

Those of you who follow my twitter or facebook have already heard this story, but for the rest of you, here is an explanation for my latest absence from the blogosphere.

Sunday night, T's back started to hurt and he didn't feel good. He hoped it was just a fluke and went to bed. His pain was so bad that he couldn't fall asleep and was in pain all day on Monday, complaining that it hurt to breathe. By the time he got home from work on Monday, he was pretty much gasping for air. When he tried to lie down, he was in too much pain to do so. I decided to take him to the ER, hoping that they would give him something for the pain so that he could sleep through the night. When we got there, all of this vital signs and chest X Ray were normal. I got the feeling that everyone there thought we were crazy for bringing him in. Just in case, someone decided to run a chest CT on him before discharging him. I owe everything to this person. When the doctor came back in to his room, we were expecting to leave, and instead he told us that the CT revealed a Pulmonary Embolism- blood clots in his lungs.

My husband is young, healthy, has no family history of this, and did not have any of the risk factors for it, so no one is sure how he even got it, but we are incredibly lucky that it was caught in time! He ended up being admitted to the hospital while they ran more tests. He was lucky enough to get a few naps here and there- for me it turned out to be a 36+ hour day. By the time his commander came to visit us, I had four cans of Coke Zero lined up next to me and was pretty much mainlining that stuff.

Thankfully, he is back home now. He has to give himself injections twice a day for the next two weeks and then will be on Coumadin for the next 6 months. He also needs to go get bloodwork done 2x a week now. :( He is still in pain unfortunately, and we are both drained from the experience and feel like we haven't slept at all even though that's not the case. We spent most of the day in bed yesterday just watching Once Upon a Time.

What I do know:

1) I am incredibly thankful to the person who decided to run the CT on him and discovered his clots.
2) I am incredibly thankful that I chose to take him to the ER in the middle of the night instead of waiting to waiting to make an appointment with his doctor in the morning. If he had waited, his doctor would not have ordered the CT scan.
3) I am grateful that his deployment got cancelled. Getting a PE while downrange would have been a lot more scary!
4) I believe that someone up there is watching out for my husband and I am very grateful to them for it.

Thank you to all of you who have reached out to me over the past few days with prayers, tweets, emails, etc. We both appreciate each and every one of them.

The past few days have been a blur for me and I am emotionally drained from them.