Hello,My PE was July 22. I spent 10 days in the hospital. They tell me I could have died. I realized I am so blessed to be here.The time and patience is the hard thing, not to mention the anxiety, getting better at it. I take coumadin. I'm glad you are still here too. So glad you are getting stronger, continue to get better and stay healthy.

I didn't know that's how he died either, but it does really shake you to the core when you hear stories like his.

About week after I had my PE, a friend of mine told me that she had just had another friend die suddenly from a PE, so she fully understood the seriousness of what happened to me. He was early 30's went to an Urgent Care center with complains of leg pain and shortness of breath. They dismissed him, and he died the next day. :(

It really makes you step back and take a deeper look at things. I had a very large PE and survived. I am overweight, sedentary, and my BMI is 41. Roddy was an athletic guy and a presumably much smaller PE took his life. I guess when it's your time to go it's your time to go. I'm also glad you're still here man. I hope Roddy's story can help us shine a spotlight on pulmonary embolism! It kills more people annually than cancer and aids combined and no one seems to be championing the cause. We don't have little pink ribbons for our PE survivors. Any how, my prayers are with Roddy's family and all of those who have passed away from PE.

Well, let's be honest. Roddy did a lot of drugs and alcohol in his life, including steroids, and previously battled cancer, so I don't know that he was a vision of health and athleticism at this point, since all that will damage your body. But as we know, PEs are an equal opportunity offender, striking athletes, healthy people, and unhealthy people. I think sometimes it's just dumb luck who survives and doesn't. All you can do is accept your good fortune and live the best you can going forward.

It really is dumb luck who survives. I'm not big on religion, I just think some people get lucky. I was reading that Saddle Embolism actually helps some people survive, because it acts like a filter that traps the clot between the pulmonary arteries and prevents them from going deeper in the lungs. It still makes you wonder at times. It's hard to face your own mortality. At least for me it was.

Here's how I try to look at that, Jeremy. I see facing our mortality as a gift. It gives you an insight not a lot of people have about how quickly things can change, how good it really is to be alive.

Most people never get what it means to be a mortal being, what it REALLY means, which is that whether it's today, tomorrow, or years down the rode, we're all going to freakin' die somehow, some way, for real. And so understanding that on a profound level, which people who had critical clots and who were aware they were in trauma the entire time it was happening, gasping for air, saying goodbye to their loved one for what they think is the very last time which is what happened in my case, you become more comfortable talking about your mortality, your loved ones mortality, more aware of your relationships with people, more aware of the life you're living in general, more comfortable accepting the inevitable.

My PEs were in 2007 and I still feel this way; I still feel like death, while concerning and not something I want, is a bit demystified for me now. It doesn't quite freak me out the way it used to.

Everything is how you choose to see it.

I wasn't in critical condition with my clots. I didn't have any right sided heart strain which is the number one killer in large saddle PE patients. I just felt so helpless sitting there in the hospital. I can understand how you were much more affected by your PE's because you collapsed and were in critical condition. My clots were considered stable an chronic. I was reading through my hospital notes. My PE's were apparently chronic from what they wrote in the notes. That's why they never used the clot busting drugs on me. That in itself freaks me out that my lungs were clotted up for so long and I didn't even know.

I had an accident where I was almost decapitated in a motor vehicle in 2008. That was a much more traumatic experience for me than the PE's. Whenever I drive in rain and feel the rear wheels slip I almost go into a small panic attack. It brings me right back to that day. I know what immortality is. That event only lasted maybe 15 seconds, and It still haunts me to this day. The hardest thing about surviving a PE is knowing that death was coming from within and not from an external event. We all expect that some type of external event can take us out at any point in time, but we never think about or own bodies going haywire. Once you open up Pandora's box you can't close it back up again. It changes you for the rest of your life.

That's interesting, because I see it as the complete opposite. For me, I just assume my body will quit working, because that's generally inevitable. Our bodies are designed from the get-go to fail internally at some point. It's the freak accidents and wrong place at the wrong time scenarios, the external factors, that seem so hard to grasp. People have heart attacks, get cancer, strokes and it's sensible, right? I mean, unpleasant and sad, yes, but it's not out of the realm most people's experience with the human body, either their own or someone they know. But no one expects a toddler to drown in 2 inches of bath water, or a person sitting on their porch to get shot from an errant bullet or to get in a deadly car crash on the way to work. That's messed up.

My critical care doctor who treated me while in the ICU died a couple of months after my PE. A tire came off a semi truck as he was driving home on the freeway from work and smashed into his windshield, killing him instantly. I've told that story here a few times about because it still affects me, more than my PE. When I was admitted, this doctor took my hand and sat at the edge of my bed (such a compassionate doctor), and said how lucky I was, that someone was watching over me, and that " life changes in an instant." For him to die in such a weird manner, in an INSTANT... ok, that is something that I'll never forget and I'm so grateful it's still with me, showing me things, teaching me things.

But like I said, I think it's just how you look at it. No right or wrong answers, but I think everyone has to sort of find a way, when they're ready and able, to embrace their good fortune after a PE, to be ok with being one of the lucky ones and to accept their bodies and all its flaws as still a wonderful piece of machinery.

Wow, that really sucks about your doctor. I put over 100k miles a year on the road all of the time and I never had a tractor trailer tire come at me. I have heard of it happening and killing people, but man to see that happen to such a nice doctor must really mess with you. I guess we're all just fish in a barrel. We can get snatched up at any time.