Last week I made a passing reference to the fact that my husband and I found that one of the conveniences of our hotel location in Chicago was its proximity to Northwestern Hospital’s emergency room. I hadn’t planned to write about that, until I remembered that there is a tie-in between the reason for our visit there and a health concern for travelers.

Actually, neither of us was the patient in this case. Our daughter was going to meet us Friday morning at our hotel for a day of sightseeing, but she called early to say she’d been awakened at 4:30 a.m. with pain in her upper back and shortness of breath. Two days before, her physical therapist was applying heat and massage to a tight/sore calf muscle and half-jokingly had commented that the location of her complaint was a little unusual for a cramped muscle, and that he hoped it wasn’t a clot, because his treatment wouldn’t be a good thing for that. The fact that Jenny is a nursing student means that her imagination is supplied with all kinds of supporting details whenever a health issue comes up, so Friday morning she had pretty well diagnosed herself with a pulmonary embolism (blood clot in a lung) resulting from a deep-vein thrombosis (DVT) in her leg.

She consulted with her nursing instructor who encouraged her to have it checked  out. Because Jen has been doing one of her clinical rotations at Northwestern, she already knew it was close to the Affinia, so that made our decision as to where to go easy (the campus health center was never a serious option, considering its limited resources).

Luckily, the ER was almost empty, and she was attended to pretty quickly and efficiently. The doctor agreed that her history (foot surgery this summer, a long plane trip in the last month, medication she takes) and symptoms pointed to an embolism, so blood tests, a chest X-ray and CT scan were all ordered. After about three hours — and we don’t yet know how many dollars – everything came back negative, and we were set free to explore Chicago. Jenny’s symptoms had dissipated, and the doctor said it was possible she’d had a small clot which had dissolved on its own (not uncommon) or something else had caused the trouble. It was an enlightening (albeit expensive) field trip for our budding nurse, and the Northwestern staff was great, but it wasn’t how we’d envisioned beginning our stay in Chicago.

It did remind me, however, that DVT is a real concern for travelers who must sit for long periods of time. The Mayo Clinic’s website gives a good overview of the condition, along with risk factors, symptoms and treatment. I recall a while back that most airlines were placing information about DVT in their safety materials, and some even referred to it in their pre-flight instructions, though I think it’s faded into the background now. It never hurts to be reminded that it’s to your benefit to get up and move around every few hours on a long flight, or pull over and stroll about if you’re on a long car trip.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure . . . and could certainly save you a trip to the ER!

Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader