B+, You Only Live Once

Kristen was in the best shape of her life. She just returned from coaching at the state championships for track and field, where she watched athletes she trained, coached, and mentally prepared medal and run their best times individually and set marks higher than before. To unwind, once home, she decided to go on a nice, long run and stretch her legs out from all the travel. But halfway through the run, something went terribly wrong. Her right arm start feeling tingly and cold. She continued run through it, but her symptoms persisted to get worse. Within minutes, her arm was white, and she could feel the fingers on her right hand going numb. She knew that she needed to find her car right away.

She took short cuts through the woods, and by then her entire forearm had turned a bluish color. She decided she needed to get her to the hospital right away, because her hand was numb. She knew she couldn’t drive, so she called her mother to pick her up. As soon as her mother saw her arm, she knew something was wrong and motioned her to keep her arm above her heart.

Once arriving at the ER, she was taken back to the examining room immediately. She had to have various imaging studies done. It showed that Kristen was getting no blood flow from her subclavian vein in her neck to her arm at all. They ran dye thru her veins to assess the problem, and they had their answer: a massive blood clot. This answer would be the eye of the storm and the start to Kristen’s self-discovery and strength to overcome more difficulty than she would ever think possible. But this was just the beginning of her eight-year medical journey that still leaves many questions.