How I Got Here

I felt inconvenient, out of touch.  It's that feeling you get when you go through the same thing day after day and no one seems to notice that in a pool of quicksilver fish zipping along under the water, you're barely able to keep up a good dog-paddle.  I felt like I was just there.  I felt very alone.  I felt like it was almost done--and then it was, and I didn't want it to be.  On Monday, May 3rd 2010, I collapsed in front of a dance class.  I'd had pain in my left leg for a few months but chalked it up to my job--after all, when you're on your feet for a few hours a day dancing you get sore muscles and such, right?  That didn't explain the feeling of being shot in the chest, or the cold sweat, or choking on my own breath.  So I wobbled over to the waiting room door and then there they were, my students, huddled in a pile and looking at me with fearful faces.  I'd dropped right in front of them.  I don't remember falling.  Thankfully my mother was there.  She owns the studio and was in the back room chatting with clients.  I could barely talk, so I squeaked at her and she came to my side.  By then I was sitting against the waiting room door, dripping with sweat and waiting for my head to clear, for my breath to return.  Call the ambulance, ask what's wrong.  The usual.  "Her father had a pulmonary embolism in his twenties."  The EMT paled.  We're taking her.  NOW. The ambulance ride was short, the EMTs personable.  Start an IV, speak words of comfort, ask me who I am and what went on during my class.  "I was just standing.  I think I was changing a CD or something."  Down in the emergency room I was stripped of my wedding ring and sent to a giant tube to be scanned.  By then my husband is there, calm for a man who is seeing his wife of only 7 months turn away from a dark place she had no idea she was in at all.  When we were informed that I had too many clots to count in my lungs, everything went very still.  Mum cried, even though her memory had saved me.  My husband held my hand tightly.  My sister was on her way home.  I have no recollection of how I felt.  I'm not sure I felt anything. ICU.  Lovenox, Coumadin, INR.  I learned it all very quickly, and yet it still didn't really seem like any of this had happened to me.  "We don't know how you survived."  Neither did I.  Are you sure it was me?  "Were you on the pill?"  Yes, and trying to quit smoking.  The clot in my left leg was huge.  It ran from mid-calf to mid-thigh, minus the part that had rushed up into my chest and detonated.  I ended up with a filter that decided to embed itself and had to be removed surgically after six months of treatment, but that is another story.  I remember the pain that second night, the idea that if I moved at all something would come back and finish the job.  I still can't sleep sometimes even though my leg is clear.  Sometimes the fear clings to you like a terrified kitten, digging in claws and crying for a comfort that you just can't give at that moment. Two things I remember most of all out of that week that started so darkly--I ask Mum if she wants to brush my hair, one of the things we both know will help me be peaceful and centered, but the effort involved in sitting up makes bells ring at the nurse's station.  They run in with a big machine and check to see if something else is on the move inside the dangerous maze of my circulatory system.  My oxygen level is 85.  We decide I'll survive with a ratty ponytail for now.  For the first time in a long time, I feel safe.  I feel like there's a reason I stayed.  I get moved to a room with a spectacular view, and they encourage me to walk through the hallways.  My oxygen level is in the nineties and I have a bruise in the shape of Australia on my left hip.  On my right hip is the Lovenox constellation, shining above a burning pool that lies beneath my skin.  I am tired of injections, of being bled dry, of numbers and of my racing heart.  My husband has been here almost every night, sleeping in a recliner, holding onto me in a way that I never thought I deserved.  He didn't have to do this.  He did it because he needed to, because doing any less would hurt me and him more than the pain of the clots ever could.  He did it because he needs me.  On May 10th, I was sent home with orders to continue Coumadin and see the Hematologist for Lovenox injections.  Two more weeks of tiny needles and burning and bruises ended with 2.53 and a sigh of relief.  I spent seven months on this medicine, one month off, then three back on thanks to an elevated d-dimer.  I went back to the studio.  I watched my diet so closely it began to drive my husband a little nuts.  I went for walks.  I was short of breath and everything ached.  I had blood drawn every week and walked in a daze when my dose went up, when I was obligated to two more milligrams than I had taken the day before.  I fought to feel normal again.  I had the filter taken out and had to go through Lovenox once more after being off the meds for surgery.  I bear this scar, this badge of courage, just as proudly as I bear the name of Embolism Survivor. I cried when I was put back on the Coumadin after a month, then squared my shoulders and decided I would take my lesson and share it with the world.  I have two more months to go. Through all of this, people loved me.  And when it is all over, that is what I will keep with me forever.