I am delighted to say that I spent 6 1/2 hours in the Emergency Room at Oakwood Hospital last night. Oh it was tiring and aggravating but I was happy to do it.

The day before yesterday, my husband felt a pain behind his knee. We thought he must have pulled a muscle or stretched a tendon. He could not remember anything he had done to cause the problem. The next day it started to really swell and by evening his leg started to turn blue below the knee. At that point, it was off to the emergency room with his very swollen blue leg.

Our fear was that it could be a blood clot that might travel and kill him. They took his information as soon as we walked in. Then, proceeded to take his vitals and information about the problem. We waited about 45 minutes to be taken back to a examination room. Then it was wait for a doctor. In the mean time, a nurse came in and took his vitals again. The doctor finally examined him. He said it may be a cyst that had burst or a blood clot and an ultrasound was necessary to determine the problem.

We then had to wait a couple hours for his turn with the ultrasound machine and a reading from radiology. They determined that this was one of the biggest cysts that they had ever seen in a leg and it had burst. Keep the leg elevated and see your physician the next day was the advice. He thought that it might not require surgery and would eventually be absorbed by the body.

The point of all this is not that you care about my husbands leg but that in 6 1/2 hours we went from fear to diagnosis and treatment. Only in America!

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