Is there a Dr. House in the house?

I recently received the letter with the results from my blood work, and – though I’m no doctor – I have to say it was less than edifying. It was so far from edifying, in fact, that even the hematologists found it unedifying and have decided that I need to do the whole thing again. On the one hand, the fact that they have found essentially nothing is reassuring – the more obvious culprits like Factor V Leiden and certain mutations have been ruled out. On the other hand, having no firm explanation for something that could have killed me is less than reassuring. 

There were two finding that bordered on being useful and I’m assuming their border-line nature is the reason they want to run the whole battery of tests again. There were some indications of a possible Protein S deficiency (which affects less than one percent of people in the United States*, so it kind of figures that that would turn up since it seems beyond unlikely that somebody with Factor VII would end up with emboli in the first place.) Apparently I might also have a Vitamin K deficiency, which can lead to the Protein S deficiency. However, a Vitamin K deficiency can also inhibit blood clotting – and the fact that those two things coexisting makes absolutely no sense to me at all is why I am not a hematologist. Furthermore, nobody can explain how I came to have not just a thrombosis but a full-blown embolism (more than one, in fact) in spite of having an underlying condition that inhibits blood clotting. One would think that it would have been almost impossible for me to end up with emboli, but apparently I am some sort of medical oddity and it’s time to call in Dr. House.

I also seem to be developing an allergic reaction to my anti-coagulant, which is a heparin solution that I inject daily. Under ordinary circumstances drug therapy in the aftermath of an embolism, or prophylactic treatment in the case of a diagnosed clotting disorder, is quite simple: there’s an oral anti-coagulant. Under certain circumstances (pregnancy, for example) people can’t take the oral medication and have to inject. Other conditions for which the pill form are contra-indicated include Factor VII, so I’ve been injecting my anti-coagulants since August 3. Which on its own has been no fun, but to make it worse I suspected I was having some sort of reaction to the Fraxiforte quite some time ago, what with the swelling and the welts and the kind of itching that would send a horse running off a cliff in crazed agony. The blood test confirmed this with some anti-body level (that’s about as specific as it gets, I’m afraid) that should hover at around 4% (of what, I do not know) charting in at about 35%. So yeah, I’ve developed an allergic reaction to my anti-coagulant.

All of this leaves me sort of nowhere. I’ve been given a prescription for several massive doses of Vitamin K to take before the next round of blood tests. I’ve been switched over to a different anti-coagulant – the one other one I seem to be able to use – until the next round of blood tests. I’m to keep going on as I’ve been going on until the next round of blood tests. And we’ll see if they show anything.

And then I’ll call in Dr. House.

* For purposes of putting me in a medical chart, the fact that I was born in the US to parents who were also born in the US and then spent the first thirty years of my life in the States over-rides my Swiss residency.