Just curious: how did you have shoulder/chest pain before the clot embolized to your lungs? Or did you go with a swollen leg and the rest happened after you arrived?
Also, the vast majority of people with PE survive. Depending on the size of the bastard, you can get heart dysfunction and pulmonary hypertension (which can be very severe) down the road.
Basically, unless your blood pressure tanked, your chance of dying from it was probably close to zero.
Not to say it's not a scary thing or that you shouldn't go to the hospital immediately, but we over-diagnose and over-treat PE's all the time. The latter is because we over-estimate their severity.
The clot started out in my legs, likely formed as a result of a transatlantic trip a few weeks prior. Parts of the clot had previously dislodged and traveled to my lungs, leading to multiple embolisms. When the much larger clot dislodged and traveled through my heart it dropped my heart rate to about 20bpm, which is fairly close to zero.
Also, the vast majority of people with PE survive. Depending on the size of the bastard, you can get heart dysfunction and pulmonary hypertension (which can be very severe) down the road.
Basically, unless your blood pressure tanked, your chance of dying from it was probably close to zero.
Not to say it's not a scary thing or that you shouldn't go to the hospital immediately, but we over-diagnose and over-treat PE's all the time. The latter is because we over-estimate their severity.