Clot

In the first week of January, Paul started complaining off and on that his arm hurt. He mentioned it kind of casually, that it was sore as if he'd worked out but he hadn't really done anything with it. He didn't sound like he was in a lot of pain or that he was particularly upset about it so I didn't think much of it.

On friday night he called me before he came home from school and said that he thought there was something wrong with his arm. Again, he didn't sound alarmed or in pain so I told him I would have a look at it when he got home.

He walked in the door, took off his coat and sat down on the couch. I glanced over at him and actually did a double take. I'm not sure that my butt touched the couch between my side of the couch and his, all I know is that I was examining his arm in under three seconds. His entire right arm was swollen and red, from his fingers right up to his shoulder and his chest and back around that shoulder. It was hard to the touch, like touching the fake plastic flesh of a mannequin. He said it only hurt in his shoulder but the arm ached like after a hard workout.

I couldn't convince him to go straight to the hospital, but I managed to convince him to go to the medicentre. Roughly an hour later we were on our way to Emergency with a referral letter from the medicentre doctor.

On a Friday night Emergency at the University Hospital is always a zoo, but because of the potential severity of Paul's case, we moved quickly through triage and into a "room" (curtained stall). After being examined by five doctors (one of them just poked his arm a bunch and acted like Paul was lying when he said he didn't work out), they sent him for chest x-rays and gave him a shot of blood thinners in his belly. They said that the biggest possibility was a blood clot and that we would have to come back the next day for an ultrasound.

Morning found us back in emergency, waiting for the results of the ultrasound. The technician found clots all the way up Paul's arm and a large clot in his shoulder, where the worst of the pain was. Apparently since there was no injury, no family history of clotting, and the clot was in an uncommon area, the doctors were quite worried. They gave him another shot of blood thinners and a prescription to continue them, a prescription for blood thinner pills, requisitions for a ton of tests, and a referral to a hematologist. We left for home, tired and shaken up.

It required a significant adjustment of our lives, a complete role reversal. Paul had always been the strong healthy one while I was generally weaker and sicker. Now I was doing the lifting and carrying while he had to rest and remember to take his pills and get his tests. We had to be careful of anything that might cause him to bruise or bleed, and he had to avoid all kinds of foods that would interact with his meds. While I was happy to cover where he needed help, Paul is just not good at being sick and remembering all of the important restrictions. He didn't want to have to slow down and not play hockey and watch what he ate. I was frustrated at what I saw as his lack of attention to his health and he was frustrated by all of the restrictions.

We've adjusted some now and found a better balance, but it's going to be a long haul until Paul is healthy enough again for things to get back to normal. I don't think they will ever get back to the way they were because I think that now he knows I am stronger than he thought I was (and I am less confident in his health than I was - paranoid, he says). The next hurdle is flying out to Vancouver for a wedding without me freaking out about him randomly hemoraging while fulfilling his duties as a groomsman.