I was living in Arizona and going to school. I was in a very minor car accident where my knee hit the dashboard. It was bruised, and about two weeks later, I started feeling a painful cramp behind my knee, similar to a charley horse. When I told my primary care doctor, he ordered an ultrasound, but it was negative, so I was sent to physical therapy.
I asked if it could be a blood clot, but the doctor told me to my face that young people don’t get blood clots, and I probably just had some infection, so he prescribed antibiotics.
Instead of it getting better, it got worse and started spreading up and down my leg. After a few weeks, one morning during class, I suddenly felt like my leg was dying. I couldn’t focus on a thing, and I couldn’t put any weight on my leg. I tried to get through my classes so my husband could go with me to urgent care after.
By then, my leg was massive (about four times the size of the other one), part of it was purple/red, and part of it was white; it was so painful, and I couldn’t move it. At urgent care, they said to go to the ER immediately.
When I got to the ER, my vitals were crazy. My heart was beating super fast, and my blood pressure was really high, but for some reason I’ll never understand, they determined I wasn’t an urgent case and let me wait in the waiting room.
I got there at 11 p.m. and didn’t go back until almost 5 a.m., six hours later. They didn’t bring me to emergency surgery for another 10 hours after that. My clot extended from my inferior vena cava to my ankle and was starting to spread to my other side at the common iliac, so it must’ve been growing for many weeks, including when I had the negative ultrasound before.
I was diagnosed with phlegmasia with acute limb ischemia. They tried to save my leg, but it was too late, so I ended up losing it. Now I’m an above-knee amputee.
In addition to the car accident, my other risk factors included estrogen-based birth control and factor V Leiden (heterozygous).
My advice is to listen to your body. If you feel like your leg is dying, it might be because it is. Doctors can be wrong. Tests can be wrong.
