Blood Clot Awareness Group to Tour Southern Black Churches

Two years in the past, it was an unusual day. I did the same old morning duties earlier than beginning my day as managing editor of the AFRO: responded to emails, returned telephone calls. All the things was high quality, till it wasn’t: I all of the sudden handed out. 

Happily, I used to be at dwelling and wasn’t alone. My husband and my grownup daughter had been there with me. After I got here to, I used to be simply as shocked as my household. The one uncommon feeling I’d skilled that day was excessive exhaustion. It didn’t appear severe. 

On the College of Maryland Higher Chesapeake Hospital’s emergency division, nevertheless, medical doctors repeatedly requested me about shortness of breath and chest ache. They instructed me I had a pulmonary embolism — blood clots in each lungs. Then, they drove dwelling how severe it was..

“Normally,” they stated, “after we see sufferers with lungs like yours, they’re already useless.”

Every year, an estimated 100,000 individuals die from issues from a blood clot, together with coronary heart assault or a stroke. A further 900,000 individuals who survive blood clots face long-term well being issues, together with paralysis or mind harm.

Black People are significantly in danger: now we have as much as a 60% larger incidence of blood clots, and mortality from them, than white individuals. The situation stays a number one reason behind Black maternal mortality on this nation.

To deal with this disaster, the Nationwide Blood Clot Alliance is launching a six-city bus tour, spreading the gospel of blood clot consciousness at church buildings within the South. Alliance members will train their host congregations methods to forestall blood clots, how one can determine the warning indicators and the steps they need to take to handle the situation.

“It’s well-known that Black People face considerably larger charges of blood clot incidence and mortality, but details about blood clots will not be reaching our communities,” Arshell Brooks Harris, an NBCA board member, stated in an announcement saying the tour. “We’re taking consciousness on to the individuals and offering the knowledge they should shield themselves and their family members.”

In keeping with the American Coronary heart Affiliation, a blood clot, or thrombus, occurs when blood movement by way of the physique slows in an space, permitting blood to gather and congeal. The clot builds, then breaks free and strikes by way of the bloodstream till it lodges in a slender passageway.

The clot, known as an embolus, blocks blood movement, ravenous important organs, tissue or limbs of oxygen. An embolus in a coronary artery may cause a coronary heart assault; in a cerebral artery, it might probably trigger a stroke.

Every year NBCA serves greater than 3 million individuals with blood clot-related info, assets, and assist. Sadly, Harris is aware of in regards to the topic from expertise: her daughter, Leschel Brooks, died from blood clots. 

 “No person must be dying from blood clots, given how preventable they’re,” she stated.

The bus tour, which can kick off Blood Clot Consciousness Month in March, will make stops at church buildings in Atlanta, Birmingham, Charlotte, Houston, Memphis and New Orleans. 

Shirley Bondon, govt director of the Black Clergy Collaborative of Memphis, says the tour is a major step ahead in bringing consideration to the difficulty and probably saving lives.

“We stay up for partnering with the Nationwide Blood Clot Alliance and elevating consciousness about blood clots within the Black group in Memphis,” she says. ”Data is energy, and with info, we will scale back each the incidence and mortality of these impacted by blood clots within the Black group.”

Bondon and others imagine the bus tour could be a godsend for everybody, not simply church members. The church occasions are open to residents of surrounding communities, and church buildings can nonetheless register to be hosts for the tour.

As for me, I’m doing significantly better — medical doctors imagine it was a fluke situation and never a power sickness. After 6 months of taking blood thinners, I’m clot-free. I’m grateful to be alive and glad it hasn’t affected my life-style.

Passing out, it appears, was a wake-up name.  

For extra details about NBCA go to www.stoptheclot.org.