The next day we had a food tour scheduled, but my calf pain was worse, and one possible cause was a blood clot (DVT). Since we were flying the next day, and I was in pain, we had a tour of the Brazilian emergency room & medical system instead. (In some ways, very similar to the US system – before I could talk with anyone, they needed to have a credit card. Although it was considerably cheaper than US emergency room visits.)
The doctors in the emergency room understood my concern, and performed an ultrasound on my calf. (Sheila said I was just trying to get out of flying to Cuiabá where it’s projected to be 105 degrees.) I explained that my pain medication – Advil – hadn’t affected the pain at all. The triage doctor sniffed and said something like – oh, you Americans, you like Advil, but it’s really just for children.
We had convinced ourselves that it was definitely a blood clot, which meant I couldn’t fly, and would probably be in the hospital for a few days, which meant our tour of the Pantanal would be cancelled, so we were checking our travel insurance fine print to see what coverage we had. Sheila wasn’t going to go if I couldn’t, which was nice of her. (Both our travel insurance seemed to cover the possibility.)
All this pre-catastrophing seemed to be an anti-jinx, because the doctor said “no blood clot”. Whew!
But what the hell was wrong with me? The doctor said it was muscle pain, probably connected to my back issues. (But I’ve had back pain for years – I know what it feels like, and what fixes it, and this seems different.) However, they gave me plenty of medication – for pain, muscle relaxant, and inflammation treatment (which was…Advil, or rather Ibuprofen). Over the day my leg felt better. (Though still not great.) We walked around the botanical gardens, then headed back to our hotel to pack for tomorrow.
So – that’s the last I’ll talk about my calf. But it never stopped hurting – it was as if I had a charley horse that never let up. It was excruciating at night – I never got a full night’s sleep the entire trip,. It did slowly ease over the day, but then got worse as I lay in bed It didn’t seem to matter if we spent the day walking, or sitting in a van or boat – there was no change. And the medicine the hospital gave me didn’t seem to do very much at all. (I’m home now as I’m writing this, and I’ve scheduled an appointment with a physical therapist.)