Hi, today, a close family member told me that most of the ball of her right foot became swollen and bruised, with the pain being sustained and moderately intense when walking/standing and noticeable when not supporting any weight on that foot (i.e. sitting or lying down). It wasn’t severe enough to prevent her from sleeping, she said, but was bad enough that taking a morning walk was “uncomfortable because of the pain, though hardly unbearable”.
She also told me that a blood test result showed that her both her blood pressure and her LDL cholesterol levels were somewhat, although not extremely high (I believe she said the LDL number was 160.), the latter being high enough that her physician recommended diet modifications and regular aerobic exercise and further monitoring. I am not sure whether this information pertains to what she described to me in the previous paragraph…
She is otherwise healthy; she is a nonsmoker and nondrinker of age 59, and works in a clerical job, and has a normal BMI (that is not even close to “borderline overweight”).
She is seeing her doctor later this week; I was wondering whether the swollen and bruised foot and sudden pain that she told me about was potentially a serious problem / indicative of a serious condition, or rather, is benign?
P.S. Is there any indication based on the information provided, as well as inferences and your personal/professional knowledge, that a potential stroke or heart attack causing thrombosis might occur as a complication of what I have described? Is the worst case scenario that my close family member is living with a ticking time bomb for a stroke/heart attack; i.e. if this had occurred in her brain or heart, respectively, it could have killed or severely incapacitated her?
From what you say here, she’s not at terribly great risk for a blood clot, but anything’s possible. But what you describe doesn’t sound much like it, so I’d try not to worry about that particular scenario too much. Blood clots don’t generally cause visible bruising, because the clot is inside the vein. Bruises are blood that’s *not *clotting leaking out of the vein. If it was a blood clot, I’d expect to see redness and swelling, not bruising.
Also, heart attacks and strokes don’t cause blood clots, but rather the other way around - a clot may break free, travel through the blood stream and then get stuck, blocking an artery feeding the heart or brain and cause a heart attack or stroke. While a clot may start in the foot, they more commonly start in the calf or behind the knee, where the veins are bigger and blood more prone to pooling. They’re also more common in smokers, obese and sedentary people.
Best to wait and see what a doctor or nurse practitioner says after actually examining her, unless her symptoms change. There’s an almost unending list of possibilities that can only be narrowed down by an actual examination.
Hang tight. Let us know what they say and if there’s something you don’t understand once there’s a diagnosis, we’re a great board for 'splainin stuff.
If it’s truly ecchymotic, that’s quite an interesting presentation in the absence of trauma.
If the “bruising” is just redness (or even purply-red but not ecchymosis), it’s gout or pseudogout, statistically. There is always a differential diagnosis (sesamoiditis, e.g.).