|
|
2014—Pulmonary Thrombosis |
|
|
In mid-March, 2014, I was suddenly stricken with the most life-threatening and -distorting affliction I’ve yet experienced. The label in this page’s header gets ’way ahead of itself: it took “the health care system” six weeks to come up with that correct diagnosis. On the way, it delivered two inaccurate death sentences: congestive heart failure, and pulmonary hypertension, leaving me and my loved ones to marinate in each at length. At every turn, the “insurance” bureaucracy stood in the way of correct diagnosis and treatment, inserting myriad inexcusable delays and distortions.
They were wheeling me down the hall on a gurney for some sort of scan (that had finally, mirabile dictu, achieved advance clearance from the MBAs at “Humana”) when one of the doctors dashed out of a door to abort the scan, announcing that, in fact, I had a clot in my lung. |
 Dr Mike Kirkham |
Wikipedia says lung clots kill between 50,000 and 200,000 Americans a year. A curiously wide range of estimate to be sure, but scary at either end. I first became aware of mine at the top of Chankly’s stairs, when two or three steps would suddenly leave me unable to take another or to breathe.
Oxygen was a pretty obvious requirement, but the “insurance” minions put such and so many barriers in the way of Dr Mike’s attempts to obtain it for me, that he actually showed up, unannounced, at our door,* administered a simple oximeter test, and placed an emergency phone call to Apria, a supplier of such. Under those conditions, we were impressed and gratified with Apria’s promptness: very quickly, our upstairs hall was adorned with an R2D2-sized “concentrator” which wheezed there for several months. |
|
Meanwhile I slept a lot, moved around very little, hurt some, swallowed large quantities of expensive blood thinning agents, lost my treasured position as a sealer in the Bountiful Temple, and eventually rejoiced as my clot “resorbed.”
If this record is sparse for 2014, that’s because not much else happened, until late in the year, as I was occupied full-time in recovering from this affliction. I was tempted to include a lot of the details here: they make for horrifying reading. Please chalk it up to merciful tendencies on my part (toward you) that I’ve put the full story in a folder at |
| Jobiska/Content Archive/SuchALife details/140326 Thrombosis Diagnosis Episode |
|
*See why I treasure Dr Mike? Not only is he an active, insulin-using diabetic, so that I know that what he tells me about the ailment we share doesn’t come entirely from book-larnin’, but he actually made a house call, unheard of in these decades, for my benefit.
|
|
Back a Page (2013—Second Lumbar Fusion) |
Such a Life Contents |
Chapter 4 (1972-2002) |
Chapter 5 (2003-?) |
2013 2014 2015 |
Chapter 6 (People) |
Next Page (2015—Fisher Descendancy) |
| Welcome | Stories | Sections | Such a Life | People | Places | Site Search | Do You Know? |
| Updated Jul 2020 | [2014p01.htm] | Page 514-01 |