Rebound Clots, Lung Damage, and Forced Downsizing

Day 1 · 8:08:11 · John Grant · Shawn Buckley

• 🫁 Months later he developed deep-vein thrombosis and pulmonary emboli, leaving scar tissue and lasting breathlessness.
• 🏠 Inability to maintain rentals and the acreage forced sale of the rural property, shop, gardens, and grandchildren’s playhouse.
• ⏳ Once able to work 10–12 hour days, he now needs long rests after short efforts and has lost hunting, fishing, and canoeing capacity.

Opposite clotting complications permanently limited Grant’s health and lifestyle.

← ITP Crisis: Platelets Crash to Zero After Second Shot | Why Grant Shared: Faith, Forgiveness, and Ultimate Accountability →

Transcript

John Grant · 8:08:11

Uh, because after I, I went through all this and I spent just about a year getting back together— oh, I— it also put me into type 2 diabetes. I was on insulin. I was wore out with the medications that I was on. Oh, by the By the way, I had to go in for IV meds every week for four weeks after I was let out of the hospital for some more drugs. Well, I finally got not too bad and I was doing pretty good and, uh, uh, got sawing lumber again and I built a shed and I was doing pretty good. Then in February I started losing breath. And you know, it was in church. I couldn't sing because I kept on running out of breath. I phoned my doctor the next day. He took me right away and he says, I don't know what's going on.

John Grant · 8:09:13

He listened to my heart, but he says, I'm going to send you in for a blood test and an X-ray. And so I didn't make it in on Monday. It was late in the day. So Tuesday, I'm sitting at home waiting, kind of gathering up my strength to go to the appointment. And, uh, Sandra had gone in to go visit the— my grandkids, and she gets about 20 minutes out, she's She says, no, I think I better go back and look after John. She came back in and she says, soon as we get the blood test done, I'm taking you to emergency. So we got the blood test done and got the X-ray done. And she walks over to the emergency and says, my husband is out of breath and he's got chest pains. Those are two things that will trigger the emergency people right right away. My doctor had already seen that blood work, and he saw that there was an enzyme given off from my heart because I got problems with my heart or my lungs.

John Grant · 8:10:24

And they ordered a scan of my lungs, and it turns out that I got blood clots in my lungs. So I had the complete opposite. No, I think the reference, uh, Sean, to that peeing was actually from the other one. I was thinking it was this one here. When I was in the hospital the first time, I spent— by the way, I spent 12 days in the hospital that time. I had blood in my urine, and one time I couldn't pee. I says, oh No, that's the worst thing, feeling you can have when your bladder is full and you can't pee. It let off. It had been blood clots, and I spread pee and urine all over the bathroom. It was a gross sight, but it just told me just how devastating my whole system was.

Shawn Buckley · 8:11:23

And you actually meant blood and urine? Because bloody—.

John Grant · 8:11:27

What's that?

Shawn Buckley · 8:11:27

It was bloody.

John Grant · 8:11:28

Oh, it's nice. It was red, very red.

Speaker L · 8:11:30

Yeah.

Shawn Buckley · 8:11:31

So this, you were diagnosed the first time with the low blood clot. I don't want to say the medical term because I will mispronounce it.

Speaker L · 8:11:40

ITP.

John Grant · 8:11:41

ITP.

Speaker H · 8:11:41

Yeah.

Shawn Buckley · 8:11:42

So, and then it's quite common for people that have that to then rebound the other way and get deep vein thrombosis.

John Grant · 8:11:50

That's what Dr. Wong, my specialist— now, Dr. Wong took me on as a patient after I got out of hospital because she had completed her internship and she asked, do you want me to keep you As a patient, I said, yeah, I like that. And she was very good at making sure she was following me up. And so we went through that healing process. And so when I came down with this— well, there's two things, deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embola. I had a leg that was bothering me and it swelled up and I had blood clots in my leg that moved up to my lung. Lungs.

Shawn Buckley · 8:12:28

And I'm just going to move us along about time, but, um, basically the blood clots in your lungs cause scarring and permanent damage.

John Grant · 8:12:37

As far as we know, there's a certain amount of scar tissue there so that I don't have the same capacity that I had before. I sometimes run out of breath.

Shawn Buckley · 8:12:47

And that's, that's basically limited your lifestyle, including requiring you to your rural property? And, well, the town—.

John Grant · 8:12:55

We had been talking about it because of our age, but when I got sick the second time and I got behind on my maintenance of my rental properties, and I got rid of one of them, and then I says to Sandra, I think we've got to sell this last one, but we've got to get ready to sell the acreage. That acreage had a shop that was 32 by 30, two-story We had garden spots. I had sheep running just about every summer keeping the grass down. I had a beautiful 3-story playhouse for the kids that I built. I remember them telling them that we're going to sell the place, and they came out and they spent their time playing on that playhouse. So we ended up selling the place and buying a house in town, but it took us the whole winter for me to move all my junk.

John Grant · 8:13:55

When you're 40 years in construction and 27 years in the same garage, some of you guys know what I'm talking about. So I moved it over to a little acreage that we had still attached to our, our property with different title, and in the spring we, uh, we moved in the fall, and in the spring we sold the acreage. And so now I've been dealing with— first of all, I could work for an hour, then I'd have to lie down, and then I could do an hour and a half. And it's been a long, slow process getting up so I could— I used to work 10, 12 hours a day, and And as I got older, I said, well, I don't need to really do that. I can limit it to 8 hours a day. Well, I haven't been able to work 8 hours for a long time. I love working. I love building. I love hunting and fishing and canoeing and things like that.

John Grant · 8:14:58

There's, there's one, one area of the Athabasca River that I haven't canoeed. I've gone from the Athabasca Falls into Athabasca, or into Jasper, but I haven't gone from Jasper to Hinton. I've done Hinton to all the way up to Vega Ferry on different canoe trips that I've had. I don't know how to do it. So certainly certain things have changed.

Shawn Buckley · 8:15:23

Just going to ask you one last question, uh, why is it important to share your story?