Nobody told me I’d get DVT from my broken ankle
LIKE most people, I was aware of the risks of developing a deep vein thrombosis (DVT) from long-haul flights. But earlier this year I almost died from the condition – a blood clot in the leg that can travel to the veins that supply the lungs, causing a potentially fatal blockage. The cause? A broken ankle.
Falling down a pothole before Christmas, I broke my right ankle in two places and was put in a cast for six weeks. One month after my fall, I was working on my latest book – alongside my fiction I have written two books with actress Goldie Hawn – when I stood up and collapsed. A searing pain in my chest coupled with a terrifying inability to breathe screamed heart attack, and I remember thinking: ‘ Oh, I didn’t expect to go like this.’
Hooked up to oxygen in an ambulance, I heard a paramedic tell hospital staff that he suspected I had a pulmonary embolism (PE) caused by a DVT.
The blood gets ‘sticky’ with inactivity, and the body’s natural clotting process kicks in.
His diagnosis was confirmed by a later CT scan that showed I had two large blood clots – one in each lung – as well as multiple smaller ones. All had broken off from a DVT in my right calf, travelled up my main arteries and through my heart and lodged themselves in my lungs. The largest one was pressing on my main pulmonary artery, causing the intense pain.
The following morning, a consultant stood at the end of my bed and declared: ‘I hope you appreciate how lucky you are to be alive.’
I learned later that an estimated 25 per cent of those who develop a PE die suddenly, and campaigners say prevention strategies in the UK are not good enough. Dr Peter MacCallum, senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London and a researcher for the Thrombosis Research Institute, says: ‘People are aware of the dangers of getting a DVT after a flight, even though the risk is quite small. We are far more likely to get one in hospital, due to inactivity, than flying.’
Indeed, a decade ago 25,000 people died every year because of hospital-acquired DVTs, with two-thirds of hospitals failing to screen patients for risk.
Guidance has now changed, leading to a modest eight per cent fall in deaths. There is a 14-point checklist that advises doctors to offer anticoagulant drugs if patients are considered at risk of DVT due to pregnancy, obesity, or because they are smokers. I wasn’t offered the drugs but then no one asked me about my possible risk factors before I was sent home. I could probably do with losing a few pounds, but as a 54-year-old non-smoking vegetarian with low cholesterol and better-than-average blood pressure, I might not have been considered ‘at risk’ anyway. But in reality, anyone can be affected – as I discovered almost too late.
Born Survivors, by Wendy Holden, is out now in paperback.