I was looking at old pictures tonight. I came across photos from one of my blood clots. In October 2009 I had a port-a-cath (or port for short) in my arm. A port is an implantable device under the skin used for the delivery of I.V. medication or blood draws. I was noticing that once in a while my hand and arm would turn purple, not for very long but enough that it was bothering me. It felt like I had a rubber band around my arm. After some time it started to get worse. The thing was everytime I was near a doctor my arm was just fine. I tried to figure out what would trigger it but couldn’t. It got to a point we had to make a of trip to the emergency room. When we arrived the E.R. doctor finally saw the purple hue I was talking about. He ordered some tests, but everything came back normal so they sent me home. Another week passed, my arm started to turn purple more often and for a longer period of time. I demanded they do some further investigating. Your arm shouldn’t turn that color without an explanation. The next morning I had an appointment. I’m laying on the table looking at the monitor as they inject dye into my my vein. Are you kidding me? The flow just stopped! Change of plan for my day, I ended up having an angioplasty. They thread up a device with a balloon at the end. Then blow up the balloon with the intent to stretch the vein enough to have blood flow again. They pumped up the balloon three times and then re-checked with the dye. YAHOOO it worked!

The photo on the left shows where the blood flow stopped, left of the finger. The photo on the right shows normal blood flow again. Thank goodness we did more investigating. I don’t want to think about problems that I could’ve had. We ended up taking out the port. I ended up with another port later on but that story can be another night.