Hospital Visit

While on my Paris trip I noticed my right leg swelling with some bruising around the calf area. Each night I elevated it and the swelling would go down but the leg stayed pretty warm. Anyway after a few days it pretty mush returned to normal so didn't think much about it when I went in Monday for a checkup. The doctor started asking questions and eventually asked about my legs and any swelling. I told him that when I got to Paris I noticed some swelling but it seemed to be pretty normal now. To make a long story fairly short...they did an ultrasound on my leg and discovered "an issue". The good news from the checkup is that my cholesterol was back down below 200 (it had crept up to 211 last checkup) and my HDLs were up and LDLs were down, the bad news was that I had a DVT (blood clot). We assume it happened on the long flight across the pond (sitting still for 9 straight hours).

The result was that I had to check in to the hospital for a few days for them to get my blood clotting level to the proper range to help the body rid itself of clots. I started on coumadin and expect to stay on it for the next 4 months or so while my body takes care of the blood clot. So I have to be careful of vitamin K intake (try to keep it fairly consistent) and watch out for any excessive bleeding. Thankfully I still have a few days before classes start so it didn't interfere with my job.