An Irish woman is sharing a PSA on air travel after she boarded a 1-hour flight, only to end up in the hospital. Her TikTok, which earned over 600,000 views as of Wednesday, has alarmed globetrotters about this little-known danger of flying.
In a viral TikTok, Keela Hughes (@keelahaha) shares how a normal flight landed her in the emergency room with blood clots in her leg and lungs.
What happened on this flight?
Hughes shares a storytime in a follow-up TikTok, saying how she was flying from Edinburgh to Ireland on a 55-minute flight. About 20 minutes in, Hughes says she suddenly felt a cramp in her leg and figured it was because she had been sitting for a while. After the flight and the following day, she says the cramp wouldn’t go away.
The day after, Hughes says she “stupidly” got onto another flight because she still didn’t know what the cramp was. She flew from Ireland to the Netherlands, which was under 3 hours. Once there, she says the cramp “got worse and worse” to the point where she couldn’t walk.
She went to the emergency room in the Netherlands, where they diagnosed her with deep vein thrombosis (DVT).
“They gave me blood thinners and sent me on my way,” Hughes recalls. A few days later, she flew back home, where it began to get worse.
It gets worse
“It was spreading up my legs, I got tired really easily,” Hughes says. So she decided to get it checked out at the emergency. This is where they found clots in her lungs, she recounts, after checking her chest.
“I had a bilateral pulmonary embolism,” Hughes reveals. “Which means that both lungs are blocked with the blood clot.” She explains that the clot in her leg got so large, it ended up spreading to her lungs. On top of that, the TikToker says they diagnosed her with pneumonia. This sent her to the hospital for two weeks.
Hughes says she’s now feeling better and is on the road to recovery. She advises her viewers to get “any kind of leg cramp” checked, especially if you’ve done some traveling. Hughes confirms to some of her viewers that she was on birth control, but immediately came off it when she was diagnosed. She adds that she has a follow-up appointment to confirm whether genetics were a factor.
What’s DVT?
As Hughes mentioned, DVT occurs when a blood clot forms, usually in the leg. The Mayo Clinic reports that sometimes there are no symptoms, which could explain why Hughes thought she only had a cramp.
There are many factors that can cause DVT. According to Penn Medicine, some of them are:
- Being sedentary due to bed rest or sitting too long without moving, such as during travel
- Family history of blood clots
- Having a long-term (indwelling) catheter, a tube in a blood vessel
- Obesity
- Polycythemia vera, a condition that causes bone marrow to make too many blood cells
- Pregnancy or childbirth in the past six months
- Recent surgery or fractures in the hips, pelvis or legs
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Air travel, as Hughes experienced, can exacerbate the chances of getting DVT. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) shared ways you can prevent this while flying. Namely, standing up and walking occasionally, exercising your calf muscles, and stretching your legs. Compression socks, as Hughes advised, can also help prevent a clot from forming.
The Mary Sue reached out to Hughes via TikTok direct message.
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