When a Cramp Is Actually a Clot
A glutton for good running weather, I could not resist the Thanksgiving-weekend weather. It was pitch-perfect: cloudless, warm, a cool breeze. The month before I had run my fastest marathon: just under four hours at the 2012 Marine Corps Marathon. So, I should have been recovering with light, slow, shallow runs. But several hours on a cramped five-hour flight the night before had me buzzing with pent-up energy. So, I ran. Probably too far, probably too fast. Sitting at a table in Starbucks on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, plugging away all day on a project, time slipped by. It felt good to focus, all that energy cleared from my metabolic cache. When I stood to go home Monday night, my calves immediately tightened. The pain in the right calf eased, but the pain in the left calf did not. I rested, iced, elevated the leg, and doubled up on liquids and bananas, but the pain did not subside. On Wednesday, I limped to work and trolled sports-medicine web pages. One website after another said generally the same thing: A deep-vein thrombosis (DVT), or blood clot, can closely resemble a leg cramp or a muscle tear. My stomach clenched. Recent long travel; a prolonged period of remaining in the same position; and red, painful, The emergency room’s ultrasound technician’s questions turned to silence as she tapped buttons on a keyboard and stared at the images on her screen, rarely looking up as she moved her wand over the clear jelly-like coating she’d smeared on my leg. When she stepped out of the room, I peeked at the images on her computer screen. I saw blue and grey shapes and a small red mound, like an ant hill.
