I watched the fluorescent lights pass overhead as the ambulance attendants wheeled me down the hallway. An alert went out over the hospital intercom urgently calling the trauma team to the red pod. A car accident? Heart attack? I wasn’t sure. Either way, it sounded bad, and I remember feeling sorry for whoever was going there. It wasn’t until the doors to the red pod appeared and a team of doctors and nurses stood waiting, gloved hands in the air, that I realized the trauma was me.
Over time, the compression can lead to blood clots in the leg and in the worst-case scenario like mine, the “straw” closes off completely and with nowhere to go, the blood begins to back up and pool. “It starts swelling into the skin, into the tissue, then there is the blood clot on top of that,” Shah explains. “Once all the veins are clotted off, then it starts backing up into the tissue, which is where the blue discoloration and vein starts changing color.