Embolus

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After two and half years, I googled pulmonary embolism. An embolus is any mass in the bloodstream, including fat, air, blood clot and tumor. Thrombus refers specifically to a blood clots in the blood vessels. My understanding is that it is normal to always have some amount of tiny blood clots floating in the blood stream; basically, they are starters for injuries. A pulmonary embolism means that a large embolism is blocking a pulmonary artery. A pulmonary thrombo embolism means that the large embolism is a blood clot. Most people are familiar with a pulmonary embolism beginning as a deep vein thrombosis. That is, for some reason, all of the tiny emboli congregate together in a vein and eventually the larger blood clot makes its way to an artery. As far as I know there was no evidence of a DVT in Matt’s case. What I remember the doctor in the ER telling me was that he had many many, too many small emboli in his lungs.

I also looked up statistics on pulmonary embolisms. Most of the data involves pulmonary embolisms caused by DVT because there are a lot of cases that go undiagnosed. About 600,000 people in the U.S. are affected by PE each year, and maybe 100,000 die. 25% of deaths are sudden with no symptoms, but the majority of cases go more than a month with symptoms. I found that pulmonary embolism is quite common as a serious health condition and it used to go undiagnosed for a very large percentage of the people who suffered from it. With more technology, things have swung in the opposite direction and it is now considered to be over diagnosed. What makes it difficult to diagnose is that the primary symptom is shortness of breath. Supposedly 5-8% of Americans are genetically predisposed to having a pulmonary embolism.

I still find it inexplicable that Matt did not talk about suspecting a blood clot. I never googled pulmonary embolism till now, but knowing him, he must have done it at some point after his mother died of the condition. I know I thought that pulmonary embolism meant a DVT in a person’s leg. Maybe he thought the same thing. Or maybe he pushed the idea aside because he had gone to the hospital one time years before complaining of a DVT that was a false alarm. I’m not interested in studying how things might have happened differently. But I realized that I do have to come to terms with the fact that I will probably never know how and why Matt’s body declined from running 25 miles a week to such a critical condition.

Right Now

I’m happy to report that I have been making progress in exporting the LiveMosaic content to WordPress. It’s still a work in progress, but this week I was able to stand up the test site I am working with as a WordPress blog with posts containing the textual story content as well as the first image in the story. My goal is to export all of the content and only the LiveMosaic features absolutely necessary to support the content. Next, I will be working to get all of the image content displayed in the blog and to find a way to import comments.

This is exciting for me because I feel like what I have now is deliverable..

Right Now

As you can see, I’m still working on the new theme for the site. It’s basically the boxed theme called pinstrap, with some minor tweaks. The changes to WordPress have messed with my videos, despite the fact that the upgrade was meant to add video natively. (Argh) I decided on this theme to support my new menu item at the top, “Notebook,” which links to a pinterest LiveMosaic story page -styled collection of Matt’s work and accomplishments.

Good-by February

With the recent changes to WordPress, I’ve decided to update the website theme. This first site design was something I cobbled together from the twenty-eleven theme from WordPress and another theme called foghorn. These sorts of changes always mark some mysterious milestone in this world without Matt. A few pictures to remember it by…

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Our Words

One morning last week before school, Luke hits me with: “What was my daddy’s name?” This brings me full stop in my school morning routine to give him my full and questioning attention and to say “Matt.” Luke says in reply, “I want it to be Uncle Josh… because I like him.” It strikes me that of all the men Luke knows, he understands at some level that Josh is Matt’s brother.

Matt’s Cars

the Z

the Z


the M3

the M3


the Boxster

the Boxster


the 330 aka Shiny Red

the 330 aka Shiny Red

In the first five years we were married, we owned six different cars (not all at once). Until we had kids, Matt’s primary hobby was working on cars. I remember doing an engine overhaul on the Porsche 951, and Matt put a turbo charger on the M3. The other sports cars were left alone except that Matt did all of his own maintenance. It was a big deal to buy the four door 330 in preparation for having a baby and needing a “family car.”