Tuesday: February 14, 2012 (Part One)

Valentine's Day greetings from Room J81-6 of the Miller Pavilion at the Cleveland Clinic. I'll be playing here all week. Please remember to tip your nurses and phlebotomists.

Let me explain. Yesterday morning, I could barely walk the quarter-mile from the parking garage to the radiation oncology clinic. My left ankle felt as if it were broken, the pain severe.

The radiation techs alerted the medical staff when they saw how distressed I appeared  found myself being examined by young Dr. Hearn after treatment. I provided him with a self-diagnosis of neuropathy. He looked me over and respectfully disagreed.

“I think you have a blood clot,” he said.

He set up an ultrasound appointment for early afternoon. Thankfully, Mary Lou had the day off and drove me to the appointment. The ladies spent several hours giving me various tests using sets of inflatable cuffs. Results?

Harvard Medical School 1, Lakeland Community College 0. I had a blood clot.

In the lobby downstairs, Mary Lou got me into a wheelchair, which was lifted into a van and driven several blocks to the emergency room. From there, I would be admitted into the hospital proper.
 The ER was packed. One middle-aged woman sat in a wheelchair and loudly kvetched to her mother on her cell phone about how she had been waiting for hours and had been thoroughly neglected.

We waited less than five minutes before a door opened and a nurse called my name. Mary Lou pushed me inside and closed the door. I asked why I had been called so quickly.

“Blood clots put you at the top of the list,” the nurse said.

A short time later they had me in a bed in one of the examination rooms where an ER doc gave me the once over. Then a tall and stunningly beautiful young woman entered the room. My guess? An Egyptian princess posing as a resident in the Clinic's vascular surgery department.

She asked some questions and examined my leg and was soon joined by the big boss, Dr. Daniel Clair, and a phalanx of residents.
 Dr. Clair greeted me, looked at the leg and gave his crisp assessment. He needed to get me into surgery first thing in the morning and remove the clot.