Brad Feld

Tag: blood clot

Yesterday I wrote a post titled Life Is Messy For Everyone building off of Nick Grossman’s great post Everyone is broken and life is hard.

I was in a nice rhythm after being back four days from my month long sabbatical. I felt completely relaxed, I had an awesome day long offsite with my partners, I was generally caught up with things and was loving being home. I’d scheduled a Monday trip to San Francisco to do something important with one of our portfolio companies and overall felt like I was ready to roll through the rest of the year, including committing to ramping up my running with a goal of doing another marathon in Q115.

The only thing that was bothering me was a sharp pain in my calf. I coincidentally had my annual physical yesterday afternoon. My doctor and I talked about it and she took a look at it. It wasn’t obvious what it was and she decided, after we went back and forth, to have me go to BCH (our local hospital – which is just awesome) and have an ultrasound.

I went over at 4:30pm. They finished at 6:00pm and put me on hold (e.g. wouldn’t let me leave until I talked to my doctor). That made me a little nervous. At 6:30pm I was at the ER in triage for a blood clot in my leg. I was supposed to have dinner with my friend Raj at 6:00pm – he left the restaurant and just came and hung out in the emergency room with me. Amy drove in. By 9:30pm, I had a full regiment of blood thinners, prescriptions, I’d learned to to give myself an injection since I have to do that for a week, and knew what all the risks were in the short term given the size and location of the clot.

I’m doing fine, but it’s yet another reminder that there are many uncontrollable things in life. I’ve got a good attitude about it, everyone in my office was amazingly supportive, Amy and Raj helped me stay mellow, and I learned something new yesterday (how to give myself an injection). Obviously I won’t be ramping up for a marathon (the cycle I’m going to be on is a three to six month one) and I’ve now got something new in the chain of health stuff that happened this year to process.

Even when things are amazing in your life, they are still messy.