Thank you. That's so interesting.

I love unexpectedly learning random things. It's what I miss about young reddit, people like Unidan just popping into threads and dropping knowledge unapologetically.

Couple of weeks ago I had some swelling in my leg accompanied by pain and standard procedure there is "rule out deep vein thromboses (clot in big leg veins) with a vascular study (sonogram), first and foremost.

First off...a male nurse escorted me to the sonographer in a transport chair (no chance of me walking all that way with the leg pain I was having). We shared an elevator with the UPS guy, who asked the nurse how he liked his sneakers (well known high-end walking sneaker brand)

I realized then and there that I'm sitting adjacent to the greatest source of candid reviews on mens walking shoes: elevator small talk between a male nurse and a male UPS driver.

I may have to buy myself a pair for myself after that conversation. The nurse was raving about them.

But I digress. The sonographer was the real hero of this story. She was awesome. Despite the pain and my social anxiety, I was exceptionally chatty that day, and asked a few questions, and learned all about the leg-pump effect, and that she could see on her display when I was holding my breath because it would slow down the velocity of the blood in my veins.

Like, I had never thought about either but they make total sense. Veins don't have their own propulsion...most of the velocity they get is from "skeletal muscle pumps"...i.e. with the legs, as you walk or shift around while standing, it helps to pump the blood back up through the veins.

All of a sudden I understood so many things. Why DVT happens. Why "sitting is the new smoking" (we also didn't have nearly as many office jobs when everyone smoked). How compression socks work. Why sometimes, especially when sick, I get a head rush when I stand up after sitting for a while.

Almost worth the thousands of dollars it cost to find out no clot, pre-existing varicose veins made it difficult for the initial doctor to differentiate between that and swelling, and that the pain was sudden onset sciatica, which I suspected all along (but never had it before so I was uncertain).