Pulmonary Embolism Support Group
By far the most common form of pulmonary embolism is a thromboembolism, which occurs when a blood clot, generally a venous thrombus, becomes dislodged from its site of formation and embolizes to the arterial blood supply of one of the lungs. Symptoms may include difficulty breathing, pain during breathing, and more rarely circulatory instability and death.
Gosh, it's been a while since I've been on here and the new changes are...DIFFERENT.
I'm now 2 years out from my PE and was doing quite well, physically. I say "was" because I'm now nearly 22 weeks pregnant with my second (my older one is 5) and I'm struggling quite a bit with this pregnancy. At my anatomy scan last week, I learned this little boy is sitting breech with his head right around my belly button. I've been noticing that I feel like I have trouble breathing more and more so that might be explained by this little guy's head up position! Nevertheless, the sensation of not being able to get a full, good breath stirs my anxiety every time and can be rather challenging to cope with. Besides that, I'm on lovenox shots (was on Xarelto pre-pregnancy).
Ive also just started seeing my 3rd hematologist since my PE. My first one was fine until I started having tons of bleeding issues and he just shrugged and basically said deal with it. He had wanted to start my pregnancy on 120mg shots of lovenox twice daily, which seemed to me just an incredibly high dose. The second hema I saw said 60mg once a day would be adequate, and that made me nervous but she (having obgyn experience before switching to hematology) insisted that was a safe dose. After she then started contradicting herself and flat out telling me I was wrong in my well researched questions/statements, I saw a the third hema. She listened to my concerns and history (also had my records reviewed as well) and compromised on 60mg twice daily. I just had my anti-Xa blood test today so I will hear Monday how the levels look and if she will want to up the dose of lovenox a little. So far she seems agreeable to finding anticoagulation that works for her and my anxiety. She mentioned the possibility of trying a lower dose of xarelto after pregnancy - 15 or even 10mg. Since I've been anemic for over 1.5 years thanks to the 20mg xarelto and the resulting periods, that might be a reasonable answer. Also, since my digestive system is no longer tolerating oral iron pills, I'm scheduled for two iron iv infusions. I'm praying that bumps my iron levels without the side effects.
So that's my update. I hope everyone else is doing well!
It sounds like you might be on the right path with this one. Here's hoping that you're on the path to a healthy baby and less anemia!