Blood clot along with lymphadema?

Hi Amanda,

I'm sorry your cancer has spread. Cancer puts us in a hyper coagulable state so it is not unexpected you developed a clot. I would follow your physician's recommendations - no pump or therapy. I hope you are on treatment for the clot. This is an important time since the medications help the body dissolve that clot. Until that happens, you don't want any pressure differences in your arm to cause pressure on your veins, which might dislodge a part of the clot. The consequence of that could be a pulmonary embolism. So, yes, this is serious but you need to address the most serious thing right now. That is your clot.

Good luck!

Jane

Hi again, Amanda,

Yes, cancer all by itself, no matter the type, tends us to become hyper coagulable. Anything that might slow blood flow through the veins or cause 'eddies' in the blood flow might cause blood to 'pool'. That is why you are advised to use the arm more which makes the body pump the blood through their proper channels. This doesn't mean your lymph fluids might follow but if they gave you exercises, do them. Just follow your doctor's orders and get the clot under control. After that, you can work on your lymphedema.

Best of luck,

Jane

Amanda, I'm sorry you got that news - both about your cancer spreading and about the blood clot! I remember your other posts about your lymphedema challenges (LE is so frustrating!).

I don't have any particular words of wisdom, but I just wanted to send you support and well wishes. Strangely, I was just dx'd with two blood clots too - it's been a rough couple days!

Interestingly the ER Dr decided to look for blood clots after asking about my compression sleeve and my LE history. It's the first time anyone mentioned the connection between a sleeve and blood clots to me. As it turned out, although I do have clots, mine were not in my lymphedema arm. I'm still learning about all this. I'll let you know if I learn anything.

Well, here I am nearly two weeks or so out from first finding my blood clots, and a week and a half into starting blood thinners and I'm still swollen. :-( My main clot is around my collarbone area, but my whole right side and lymphedema arm are swollen and painful. I'm just wondering when this will get better? I'm wearing my night sleeve. I can wear a day sleeve in moderation. The doctor said not to use a pump for 4-6 weeks. Sigh. Just feeling really beat up at the moment.

Thank you for your kind words, Amanda! I hope things get better for you too. I am also on Eliquis. They told me it would take "weeks to months" for this blood clot to get better, but I am thinking it'll be more like months at this rate. I am amazed at how painful and debilitating this has been. Fortunately they did give me pain medicine, which has been very helpful and necessary. I am supposed to resume iv chemo on Monday and I am already so exhausted and sore from the blood clot it seems really hard to get back on the chemo horse. But oh well. I guess we just keep trudging along. At least I got my scan results and the chemo is working, so that's good!

I hope your upcoming biopsy goes smoothly and that you get a good treatment plan in place. Keep us posted!

My avatar is a snippet from the painting Miranda - The Tempest, painted by John William Waterhouse in 1916. (It depicts Miranda from the Shakespeare play The Tempest.) In the painting Miranda watches a shipwreck and holds her hand over her heart, helpless to stop it. Then I stumbled upon a mirror image version of the original image, so that Miranda appears to hold her hand over her right breast. Well, I always liked the original painting, and the mirror image version seemed to hold layers of meaning for me in my own breast cancer "tempest" too. I'm not an art expert by any means, but I have always thought Waterhouse made particularly beautiful paintings. :-)

I am a big fan of Waterhouse. I have a few prints that I have framed in my home.

Buttons, amanda: I hope you both are in a better place soon and are pain free and good results on the biopsy.