I’m the girl who got pregnant four times within 3 years, and popped out three babies in three countries during that time.
I’m also the girl who got pregnant breastfeeding a 3-month-old every two hours while taking low dose birth control pills.
I’m also the girl who got pregnat with IUD earlier this year and lost the baby two months ago.
Since IUD wasn’t really working for me, I started taking birth control pills two months ago, after I miscarried the IUD baby.
Well, as it seems, this birth control method isn’t working for me either.
Birth control pills caused blood clots and I am writing this from a hospital bed.
Since we got back from our trip in Texas I’ve been having shortness of breath, and thought maybe coming back home to over 6000 feet altitude had something to do with it. Or maybe the blooming garden and mountainside were just giving my allergy symptoms.
But it wasn’t going away, and frankly, it started feeling like my lungs had gotten ten sizes smaller, and I just couldn’t breathe. Then last night I started having chest pain, and really painful breathing. This morning my chest and back felt like every single muscle was jammed and I needed a day in spa for some serious massage treatments.
I was trying to be “cool” but started just feeling so bad I wasn’t even making sense when speaking. I thought maybe I was just having panic attacks and I was totally losing it. I’ve had panic attacks before, and they feel you can’t breathe, so I thought that who knows, maybe I am stressing out the move and everything, maybe I just have anxiety.
And when Matt started panicking and saying “woman, I’m taking you to the hospital right now” I really started panicking. After all, this is a guy who flies EMS and sees a lot (and didn’t even take me to the hospital when I broke my ankle, which I survived just fine, after all, I’m one tough chick).
Actually so tough, that I had been having the symptoms of pulmonary embolus – blood clots in the lungs – for almost a month.
They took a lot of tests, and when someone just rushed to the room and said I’m taking you to the CT scan right now (and nobody had even mentioned before I might need one) I started thinking, damn, CT scan, this might not be just allergies.
The CT scan was such an intense crazy experience. They injected this “contrast material” to my veins, so they would see them in the pictures. It was really intense feeling having this stuff go through your veins within seconds.
They found blood clots in my leg and several in my lungs. I was started on blood-thinning medicine right away (talk about another crazy injection) and admitted to the hospital. I have been here for ten hours now. My family just left and all the tests etc. are done and wanted to write my blog …. and tell how messed up I was. Ha!
The doctors think that the birth control pills probably caused the blood clots, and the long road trip probably was the last drop I needed to make it even worse and go to my lungs. It might also be that I am genetically more prone to blood clots (and that’s why I might be more prone to miscarriages too, one doctor even said it is a miracle I’ve had three children).
I’m going to be ok. I’m going to be on blood-thinning medicine for months, and regular blood checks, starting daily. I can travel, as long as I keep going to the checks and my blood levels are ok. But what a crazy time to have this happen. We’re leaving on a 5 week-long road trip in two weeks.
So, all this, this, this, this AND this and I GET THIS!
No, I’m not bitter. I’m thankful that Matt took me to the hospital today and the doctors found what was wrong with me. And it is in a way like winning a lottery going to a CT scan and knowing for sure you don’t have a brain tumor. But just saying, what it is with me and birth control, everything seems to go wrong.
By the way, fertile myrtle seems to be a medical term nowadays, I’ve heard it more than enough today.
