It's kind of hard to believe that it's been 3 months since I developed a blood clot in my leg. As you may remember, it's my third clot. If I had $1 for every time someone has said lately that I'm too young to have had so many clots I may be rich.

I had a follow up ultrasound on my leg yesterday, and was pleased when the tech said she had to check my whole right leg and my left groin. Ever since the clot developed I've had swelling in my feet some days. A lot of days, in fact. It concerned me that I was still having swelling since that's a symptom of clots.

Fortunately, the ultrasound showed that the clot has dissolved! The tech and I were both pleasantly surprised. Although she didn't have to, she checked briefly down my left thigh since I told her of the swelling in my left foot.

What she did find, though, was something called reflux. She equated it to acid reflux where the valve in your esophagus doesn't close all the way, which allows stomach acid to boil upward. With reflux in your veins, as the blood travels south, the valves in the vein open allowing the blood to go to your feet. The valves should close all the way, but with reflux they don't, which allows some blood to go back north. 

The symptoms of reflux are leg pain, leg and feet swelling, leg fatigue, leg heaviness. When I talked to the doctor he said that while the numbers from the ultrasound show that the reflux is bad, he gauges his opinion somewhat on how the patient is feeling. Yes, I have swelling in my feet often, but it's not debilitating and doesn't impact my life negatively. Yes, there are days when I get home and all I want to do is put my feet up. I do get a little relief from putting my feet up, which the doctor said is good.

So at this point, since my symptoms are mild, we agreed that I don't need to do anything about the reflux (treatment is an in office procedure that closes the problem veins). When/if I start having more severe symptoms that impact my life, that's when I'll call him to take care of this. 

*sigh*