As many of you have heard by now, we had quite a scare over the last couple of days. It all started about a week ago when Cody started to notice an extreme fatigue in his legs. He was thinking he was just over tired and dehydrated, but after a few days the fatigue continued, while he felt great otherwise.
He was unable to walk more than 100 yards with sitting and resting his legs. He described the weakness as the same kind of fatigue you get after going on a really long run. 100 yard walk should not have that effect, so after a week he put a call into his doctor. That was on Monday.
Tuesday, 8am: Appointment with his primary care provider, Dr. Jacobson. He ran several tests and found that Cody had virtually no pulse anywhere in his left leg. He called to make an appointment with a Heart and Vascular Dr. The earliest appointment was July 2, so Dr. Jacobson accepted it, but told Cody that he would work on getting something sooner, hopefully within the week. Within a short time the nurse called and told him to come in the next day at 4:30p.
Wednesday, 4:30pm: Appointment with Dr. Dash. He performed an ultrasound on Cody's left leg and confirmed that there was definitely a blockage of the main artery. He gave Cody all the necessary paperwork to be admitted and sent him to the hospital.
We arrived at the hospital and within a short time were taken to the triage unit in the ER. The time line at this point is a little blurry but he was seen by a few different doctors who all came up with basically the same conclusion as Dr. Dash....Cody had a major problem in that leg. Unfortunately, they didn't have a regular room for him so he spent the night in the ER and I couldn't really stay with him. They put him on an IV and a blood thinner and I went home.
At this point the doctors thought they were dealing with a blood clot of some sort, but they weren't sure and they certainly didn't know why an otherwise healthy 31 year old would have this sort of problem.
Thursday, approximately 8am: Dr McIntyre performed an arteriogram, which is when dye is put into the vascular system and x-rays are taken to exam the blood flow. It was then that the problem was identified.
An artery has layers to it, consisting of 3 walls. The two inner walls of the major artery in his left leg had split, or dissected. There was also a large blood clot causing an 80% blockage of the blood flow. Only way to fix it was surgery.
At about 11:30am, he was taken into Pre-Op and I was escorted to the waiting room. He was taken into the OR at about 1pm and it was after 3 when I got the call from the surgeon. He had to perform a bypass of the main artery that was damaged.
Cody is doing amazingly well. We both feel so blessed that he is still here. We got a scary reminder of just how fragile life is. The doctors were amazed that he walked around with this condition for a week and can't imagine he would still be here if he would've waited much longer to be seen.
He is expected to make a full recovery, with little to no effects on his daily life from here on out.
