A scary Moment

[MISTEREE]

On Thursday morning the 17th Aug I woke up feeling ok. Got out of bed and went to the toilet. So far, so good. Came out to the kitchen and had head spins and vision issues. Had to sit down. My immediate thought was low blood pressure. I felt all right sitting down but when I tried to stand again I had the same occurrence. Mel (my partner) had gone to work by then and I was home with Sienna (my 3 yo daughter). After a while on the couch I felt dizzy and quite unwell. I also had a dry wretch or two. That cleared and I was fine for a little while but then it hit again. This time I vomitted and because I couldn’t get up I threw up on myself. When I looked down I was covered in red. My first thought was ‘What did I eat that was red?’ Then I realised it was actually blood. I rang Mel who came home straight away. We couldn’t drive me to hospital as I couldn’t stand. So Mel called the ambulance. Luckily there was a paramedic on call nearby and he was here quite quickly. At that time I threw up more blood. He couldn’t find a radial pulse and my BP was as low as 60 over something. Another ambulance arrived and I was rushed to hospital. They used the sirens when they got into town so the situation was a lot more serious than I had thought. I stayed in Emergency for most of the day, until after 3, where they gave me two units of blood and got my blood pressure up to 100. The decision was to take me to Tamworth where they had plasma and a better way of keeping an eye on me. I was Ambulanced down to Tamworth and put in Emergency there for a while. They took my haemoglobin and it was up to 100 from a low of 80. They moved me into the ward and when the doctor did his rounds decided to keep me over the weekend for observation. They did an endoscope Sunday morning and found no source of the bleed. Blood test still showed low haemoglobin. Lower than 100. I also hadn’t had any bleeds since Thursday morning. On his rounds on Monday the doctor was happy to discharge me as there hadn’t been any further bleeds. My haemoglobin is still below but climbing and I am feeling stonger everyday. What this has made me realise is how quickly a situation can change. This is the first major complication I have had from this disease. The doctor seemed confident that there was a minimal chance of a recurrence of the bleeding. Let's hope he is right!!

[Margaret_CCNSW]

Hi @MISTEREE,

That sounds like a frightening experience, but it was good that you had timely medical attention.

I hope that you have continued to improve since then and this hasn't repeated.

Take care,

Margaret

Online Community admin team

[Kathyhtak]

What a horrible experience!  How are you now?  Did the doctor give any reason for the vomiting of blood?

[MISTEREE]

I have been well since. My haemoglobin has been low but is climbing back to normal levels. No indication where te bleed came from and why it happened. I suspect the tumour in my oesophagus was the cause.

[CaptainAustrali]

Blood is always bloody scary (sorry), but not always bloody serious.

Through my cancer treatment, I was often coughing up a (sometimes scary) amount of blood.

You get this atavistic reaction like .. something broken inside me .. my body eating itself ... but in my case, my airways were aggravated by an excess of phlegm .. caused by both inflammation and a lack of saliva to push it through my body in the normal way .. so I was coughing a lot .. and the coughing abraded some minor blood vessels .. next thing you know I'm spewing into the sink and seeing blood threaded through it.

In that case, really scary, but not serious.

When the blood is bright red, apparently you shouldn't be too worried, because its fresh and somewhere near the expellation point .. example bright red blood on your toilet paper more often means haemmorhoids than stomach or bowel cancer ... but where the blood is darker, that apparently should be more of a concern, like a malignancy inside you.