My 83-yr-old mom, who lives 500 miles away from me, called me on New Years Day and told me that she has a mild case of pneumonia. Her doc didn’t think it was necessary to admit her to the hospital, and she is taking antibiotics and having breathing treatments (whatever those are) at home. One of my sisters, who lives in the same neighborhood as Mom, went over to take care of her and make sure she took her meds and was eating, etc. Mom is a retired nurse and used to teach at a nursing school.
Sis was telling Mom that Sis’ husband was having a weird pain in his leg, and that it looked swollen. A little later she mentioned that his calf felt hot. Mom freaked out and told her to get the heck out of there and get him to the ER, that he probably had a blood clot. Sis took hubby to the ER, they did an ultrasound, and… he had a blood clot. They admitted him overnight and gave him clotbusting drugs, and he will be on one- I think it’s Cumadin? for 6 months.
We all call and check in on Mom everyday, but if Sis hadn’t been there taking care of her, it’s unlikely that she would have had a conversation with her about hubby’s leg- and who knows what would have happened.
And the little hypochondriac in me is wondering if my calf always feels this hot, or…
A friend of mine at work, who also has breast cancer, was visiting family in Michigan when she noticed a pain in her neck that would just not go away.
She went to the ER, and it turned out she had a dissected carotid artery and was in the hospital for six days while they got her coumadin levels up. Normally this happens as the result of a traumatic injury, like a car accident, but in 1 in 200,000 cases like hers, it just happens.
My friend said that if it weren’t for the cancer, she would have blown off the pain in her neck. It was Thanksgiving, she didn’t want to mess up the holiday, etc. But, since she had breast cancer, any other odd thing going on in her body was enough to freak her out and send her to the hospital.
So, in a way, having breast cancer probably saved her from having a stroke.
katie, that’s a good story. People don’t always pay enough attention to their pain.
And if symptoms aren’t dramatic, “like on TV” we think it can’t be serious.
My dad had a small backache that turned out to be indicative of his having a heart attack. Luckily for us he’s okay, but it’s also thanks to my mom, who’s an RN and knew his family health history.
A few years back, my boss was feeling poorly, and thought he was getting the flu or something. He felt tired & achy, and it kept getting worse. He didn’t say anything, though, because his wife was going through a serious health issue, and he didn’t want her to worry about him. Luckily, he accompanied her to one of her appointments, the doctor took one look at him, and sent him to the hospital. He had internal bleeding and was severely anemic! The docs at the er said that they were surprised he was able to get around.
The funny thing is, I saw him every day during this episode, and I never noticed anything different about him. On retrospect, he was looking pale, but it happened so gradually that it didn’t jump out at me the way it did to the doctor.
My favorite anecdote along those lines is about a woman I knew several years ago whose life was saved by a panic attack. She was an east coast sales rep for Great White, and was supposed to be at the Station Nightclub that fatal night. But she had one of her attacks right before the show, and didn’t go. So totally ironic.
Mine’s not health related, but did involve having my life inadvertently saved by something unrelated. When we were living in Maryland, I was going to school and we were way poor, and therefore only able to afford a crappy vehicle. I was on my way to Baltimore when the car started making a god-awful noise, such that I freaked out and headed back home again. Just before I pulled into our street, the front left tire blew. It turns out that the noise was from the air conditioning, completely unrelated to the tire, but if it hadn’t happened at that time, I would have been on the highway, at highway speeds, in heavy traffic, when the tire went.
I had some kidney problems related to a horrendous hysterectomy, and in 2007 had some more kidney pain and went straight to the doctor. He diagnosed several tiny kidney stones, but more importantly, while they were doing the CAT scan for stones, they found stage 3 lymphoma. So, kidney stones saved my life.