Angela Morones is on the left with her family at a recent outing. | Courtesy Amy Allen REXBURG — What started as a doctor’s office visit for one woman quickly turned into being transported by an ambulance to the hospital and landing in the intensive care unit due to a profound health discovery. Angela Morones, 40, lives in Rexburg with her two teenagers. On Feb. 8, she woke up and didn’t feel very well. She couldn’t catch her breath. “I was like, ‘Maybe it’ll go away.’ I waited a little while … okay, it feels like it’s getting worse. I drove to the doctors and they took a look at me,” Morones told EastIdahoNews.com. She was told to go to Madison Memorial Hospital in Rexburg. Tests were run, and she was rushed by an ambulance to Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center in Idaho Falls and was put in the ICU for a few days. According to Morones, she was diagnosed by doctors with bilateral pulmonary embolism with right heart strain — she had 12 blood clots in total in both sides of her lungs and blood clots clogging up her right heart artery and one in her leg. According to the Mayo Clinic online, a pulmonary embolism is “a blood clot that blocks and stops blood flow to an artery in the lung. In most cases, the blood clot starts in a deep vein in the leg and travels to the lungs.” “I was really surprised. I had no idea how serious it was until after they sent me home on oxygen. It’s actually life-threatening. If those blood clots don’t shrink and go away, it can do a lot of damage, and people have been known to die from it,” she said. Pulmonary embolism symptoms can vary, but some of the common ones include shortness of breath, chest pain, and fainting, according to the Mayo Clinic. She said doctors are still trying to determine what caused this. Right now, she is taking a blood thinner medication to try to help make them go away. Morones has been told that she can’t work right now and needs to rest. It’s a big change since she has been a cosmetologist for the past 16 years — doing hair and nails. “I love my job. It’s my passion. My boss has been amazing, and she said whenever I can go back to work, I am more than welcome to come back,” she said. Angela and her kids. | Courtesy Angela Morones It’s been about three months, and now all she can do is wait. Recovery time could be a year or more, which leaves the future uncertain. “The stress of it all has been the most difficult, trying to figure out how to provide for my family and to keep us in our home,” she said. Meanwhile, her older sister, Amy Allen, has set up a GoFundMe to help her out titled: Help Angela Morones: A Sister Who Would Never Ask, But I Am. It has a $6,000 goal and as of Monday morning, $760 has been raised. “Angela is a newly single mother of teenagers. She was putting her life together, moving forward and learning to live this new life,” Allen said. “She was feeling pretty good and positive about where life was taking her.” But then this happened. Allen said it was terrifying. “I am an advanced EMT with Fremont County and I know what a pulmonary embolism is and just one is enough to be fatal,” Allen said. “She’s trying to keep her head above water.” According to the GoFundMe, donations would go toward covering medical expenses for ongoing tests, treatments, and doctor visits. It will also go towards assisting with home care needs, including supplies for oxygen and mobility support. Amy and Angela. | Courtesy Amy Allen “We just know what a wonderful community we have, and I really love it here, and I think that people will help. It just takes a village,” Allen said. Click here for the GoFundMe. Through it all, if there’s one thing that Morones would like people to know, it’s to listen to your body. Anything can change in an instant. “Don’t ignore certain signs. I was thinking it was from another medical issue that I have, and it turned out that it wasn’t,” she said. “Stay strong, don’t lose hope. Even though it has been the hardest thing for me … remember that you do have somebody, you have family or people who love you and still need you around. I think about my kids the most. I want to be here for them because they still need me.”The post ‘Listen to your body.’ Woman recovering after multiple blood clots found in lungs appeared first on East Idaho News.
Source: eastidahonews.com