medical stuff

At some point I need to write about a medical mystery thing that happened to me last year (because this is kind of therapy for me). Comprehensive answers have proven elusive, and since it's been an ongoing assessment I've held off saying anything. But recently a few of the component pieces have cleared up and I suppose now's as good a time as any to plunk down a synopsis.

So, the story so far:

In late summer of 2018, around Labor Day, I found myself experiencing a severe pain in my ribs and had trouble taking complete breaths. Lying on my side hurt a lot, and I even spent two nights trying to sleep upright in a recliner. I also developed a bad cough, and after a worrisome but inconclusive chest x-ray was treated for probable pneumonia. The prednisone made me feel better and I tried some runs, but the slightest uphill made me feel like I’d never run a single step before. It was a pretty weird fall.

When I didn’t really get better after 5 or 6 weeks, I went in for a CT scan of my chest. On my drive home to Greenfield from Cooley-Dickinson hospital in Northampton, I got a call from the head pulmonologist telling me to immediately turn around and go check myself into the ER. It turns out I had several blood clots and fluid buildup (pleural effusion) in my lungs. So that was a little scary.

me, hooked up to more wires than I generally prefer, and sporting some sweet hat-head hair (photo by Jennifer Garrett)

I have to note, the staff at the ER at Cooley-Dickinson was incredibly awesome, and they really made me feel like a rock star. Several of them recognized my name from the trail running guidebook, and I actually got asked, "so, are you THE Ben Kimball?" It made me blush to hear that in front of Jen, who was there with me, but still. Day: made. Trail runners are my tribe, and they are AWESOME.

Between blood thinners, rest, and natural dissolving, the clots began to go away and by mid-November my recovery was well underway (though I still needed to go in for echoes, ultrasounds, a repeat CT scan, and a full-body bone scan). I ran a test "race" (the Ray Brown 9K for K9 at Wendell State Forest) that seemed to go OK. I started to monitor my estimated VO2 Max levels using my Garmin watch and the corresponding tracking app (now I'm addicted), and the number was slowly but steadily inching its way back up from a level that might as well have been labeled "sad / so mediocre, man."

The next round of scans looked promising. The clots were definitely shrinking on their own and the pleural effusion was shrinking too. By the start of the new year I could run hills again, though I was stopping a lot to let my HR recover and make sure I didn't overdo it. So far so good. Today I feel pretty close to being back to normal, though I'm still carrying around some extra weight from all the lack of exercise in the fall.

Last week I had another follow-up chest x-ray and the pleural effusion appeared all but gone. Whew. I still have one more round of scans in another month, but for the moment it looks OK. 

The big question remains, though: why did it happen? There's no obvious answer. I take diggers occasionally while trail running, but I don't recall anything too acute last year. What I DO remember was hitting my chest with the corner of my car door, hard, when I opened it while parked on a slope. The door flew back at me and the sharp metal top corner hit me right in the side. Ouch. Maybe a fracture? Who knows. The bone scan didn't show anything conclusive. My blood didn't show any tendencies towards clotting and there's nothing in my family history. And I was told at my most recent visit to the hospital that I "have the vitals of a teenager" (which I admit made me feel really damn good). 

So, an "unprovoked" blood clotting episode then. Basically for me that means that I get to be on blood thinners for life. Which is fine. I can deal with that. Better than the alternative of another clot. That said, I've already done what I do very often -- cut myself on a briar while on a trail run -- and this was how I bled for about half an hour afterwards: 

my blood is really watery and orange now, and even small cuts just won't stop bleeding;
fortunately I love horror movies, and this is some good gore!

I'm not sure what happens next. I've got my fingers crossed that it was a one-and-done episode, but the case isn't closed just yet. Time will tell. Maybe.