Tracie

My name is Tracie and I am 41 years old. I was diagnosed with FVL heterozygous after my first PE in June 2009 after suffering what I thought at the time a bad chest infection. I had no problems my 3 pregnancies over 15 years earlier and being on the pill never affected me. The doctors couldn't find where the clot had originated last year but were looking at my legs as the source with nothing showing up. I was on Coumadin for 6 months and things were going fine until about 2 months ago when I started feeling similar to what I had last year.

Both my right and left arm and hands occassionally were painful, I was suffering from migraine headaches nearly on a daily basis. My GP did blood tests but was more concerned with my cholesterol than clotting. Almost a month ago now I woke with such a severe pain in my arm that I was screaming when I moved it. I went to a local GP who sent me to the ED. Although my Wells score and

D Dimer results indicated a clot, the ultrasound couldn't pick up a clot in my subclavian vein. The hemotologist was phoned and on the basis that the ultrasound didn't pick anything up he told the ED doctor to discharge me.

The next day I went out with my mum and started to get really uncomfortable in the left lung. By the time we got home I had stabbing pains in my left lung and called for an ambulance. I had a CAT scan which confirmed a PE in my left lung and I was admitted to hospital. The hemotologist the next day finally came to see me and took one look at my arm and said that the ultrasound doesn't always detect clots in the subclavian vein and that I had all the classic signs of a clot there. He has put me on Coumadin for life now but the arm is still a problem.

As he is treating the blood clots only and not the reason for the clots in the subclavian vein, I went to my GP who said all my earlier symtoms although were outside the "Norm", I was right in my feelings I was clotting again and has referred me to a vascular surgeon to look into the reason the clots are starting in my subclavian vein. I am not an athletic person and most of the time my arms ache after being on the PC for a while at a time. I had always worked in jobs that I was on my feet most of the time and it’s only the past couple of years when I started working as an administrative assistant that my health started to decline. It just goes to show that you should trust your gut instinct when your not feeling the best and act immediately when something isn't right.

I have found over the past year since my diagnoses that there is very little known in Australia about this condition and have found this site to be great for information. My family are pretty casual about the risk that they may have the condition. I am one of six children and so far only one sister has had the test. She has had awful problems with pregnacies and we both thought this may be why. Luckily she doesn’t have FVL.

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