Hot.......

Toward the end of May I started feeling a pain in my lower left leg. The day before I had completed a 67-mile training ride with Team LaS'port in northern Bossier Parish which I was quite pleased with though I was thoroughly exhausted from all the hills and the speed...this DOES get harder as you get older! Anyway, the next day I woke up to some pain toward the inside of my lower left leg below the knee joint. I thought I had pulled something and it'd be fine in a few days if I took it easy on future rides. Well, it would get better and then get worse over time and it was not going away. Then about 8 days after it had flared up I woke up feeling pain midway inside my left thigh. That wasn't right. A pulled or torn muscle does not transmit pain up your leg, bypassing your knee (which felt fine). And I had this noticeable reddish line on my skin along the inside of the leg.

Jonnene saw this and said, "You're going to see the doctor today and get that looked at." She was right, of course, and thought this could be phlebitis...hmmm? Sounded like a scalp condition to me but apparently it's not. "It could lead to a blood clot, " she said and that got my attention. Phlebitis is a treatable condition but it can be serious. In my mind I had this vision that I might be at my own funeral this weekend instead of riding my bike or working around the house. I didn't like the looks of that. So I was able to schedule an appointment with my doctor, saw him later that morning and he agreed with what Jonnene had thought. It was most likely phlebitis. He scheduled an ultrasound for me that I took an hour later. I came back to his office that afternoon and it was confirmed. I had some stuff in a vein in my lower leg and a bit of something at the junction of two veins in my upper leg. He was most concerned about that.

"Alan, I'd like for you to stop doing any strenuous exercise for the next 3-4 weeks. Can you do that?"

"Yep."

That was an easy question to answer. Biking and running were great for my health but I didn't need them to accelerate any condition that would be adverse to that. And that's what my doctor wanted to prevent.

Then he says that he wants to put me on blood thinners for the next 10 days. Doesn't sound too bad, I think. Then he says that he doesn't want to go with oral meds because they're harder to control with this condition. He wants me to be injected....okay, I say. You'll have to have two shots a day....uh, what, okay, I say (doing quick math I determined that was a total of 20 shots...ugh). But I'm okay with that because I want to get well and you do what you have to do, right? Unfortunately you'll have to take the shots in your stomach or belly area....I don't say "excuse me?" but I give him a look that says that.

"Do you think you can give yourself the shots?"

"No."

That was easy to answer, too.

More to come........