Blood clot on lung / anxiety

[Summer221]

TW: blood clot

I was in a+e on Friday night with chest pain and shortness of breath. But I am 18 weeks pregnant. They did a ecg, x ray which was fine and then the next day(yesterday) I had a ct scan, they couldn’t see my small artery’s but the main artery’s were clear no clots. They didn’t seem to want to do another ct to look at the small artery’s and sent me home. Surly if she was really concerned about a PE she would of told me to repeat the scan straight away
My d-dimmers blood was raised but she said it can be elevated during pregnancy. Now I’m just thinking after the weekend Iv had my anxiety is in full force. I have had a check over & the doctors really wasn’t concerned but said to come back if pain gets worse.
Should I try and forget about all this now?

I can understand why you are concerned, it can be really scary being given lots of potential diagnoses at the best of days, let alone when pregnant.

It sounds like they have been pretty thorough if I’m honest. I am surprised they did a CT scan with you being pregnant. I know when they expected a PE for me in my last pregnancy, they wouldn’t scan me.

D-dimers can be raised a bit in pregnancy so they don’t tell you as much as they would on a non pregnant person.

I would imagine if they sent you home they are not concerned hugely about a PE and the results you have sound to correlate with that. It’s likely that your blood pressure, oxygen level (spo2) and heart rate were okay too if they sent you home?

I would say if you find that you feel more unwell to go back for sure.

Big signs for PEs include tachycardia (fast heart rate) reduced spo2 and low blood pressure as well as shortness of breath.

I hope that helps!

Thank you for your message! Yeah I feel really overwhelmed with everything and my anxiety is sky high.
with the ct scan, I was reassured as they only said they scanned the upper part of my chest and that the radiation would of been very low to baby.
the d dimer test was from my GP and the doctors at A+E weren't very happy with them doing that blood test as could well be raised from pregnancy like you said.
yes all my stats were fine, well nobody told me they wasn’t, the ECG on Friday night was fine they said my heart is more then fine also the chest Xray was fine too.
the only thing that’s playing on my mind is the CT scan, I know it’s good that the main artery’s were fine & no clots but because I was anxious during the scan, the dye didn’t get into all of the small artery’s. But she didn’t feel the need to do another scan to see them, she just said to come back if pain gets worse etc. she did say she’s heading towards it not being a PE and my symptoms would be getting worse too which there not. I just feel really short of breath still today but hard to know if that’s just pregnancy / anxiety related?
i did have a high heart rate at the hospital but I know that was anxiety, I was in a right state. At home my resting heart rate is in the 70’s on my Apple Watch.

@Summer221 that all sounds very reassuring then!
Try and distract yourself from it as best you can (easier said than done I know) as worrying about it won’t help ❤
You’ve got this.