A woman named Malin Haraldsen recently caught the attention of over 20 million people on TikTok with the following photo series:
She shares a photo of her leg with a bluish hue at the ER with a time stamp of 2:30 a.m.:
The doctors thought it might be caused by a blood clot:
After 3 a.m., she started noticing that her fingers and nails were blue as well:
At 4 a.m., she got an ultrasound of her legs, fingers, and stomach:
After nothing was found and her legs became more discolored, doctors decided to give her a blood thinner...
However, as they were getting ready to administer the blood thinner with a shot, they realized that the blue was wiping off. Turns out the discoloration was from her Shein pants:
It's a turn of events that I don't think anyone expected.
And since Malin is thankfully okay, we can laugh at this situation.
But hey, at least the healthcare workers were taking things seriously and erring on the side of caution!
![Comment from a user named Alix: "As a nurse I just [skull and laugh-cry emojis] because i'm sure the Drs and nurses were more embarrassed than you!"](https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2024-03/12/5/asset/17ed17df6ea9/sub-buzz-558-1710221227-4.png)
BuzzFeed talked to Malin, who is currently pregnant. She said that she had been in the hospital a couple of months earlier because doctors thought she had a clot in her lung. Ironically, they told her that if she turned blue or had any pain, she needed to follow up. "When I went to the bathroom and saw my legs were blue, I got worried and asked my fiancé if he could call the hospital," she explained.
"The doctors supported my worries, and they didn’t understand what was going on. We figured out it was my pants coloring off when I got the blood thinners. They wiped my right thigh for the shot, and the color stained the alcohol pad. Embarrassed as I was, the doctors laughed so hard, and we were happy this was not what we all thought it was," she said.
Malin said she was wearing a cheap pair of leggings from Shein that cost her $8. "They went to the trash as soon as I got home from the hospital," she said, laughing.
While this story is funny now, it made us want to learn more about blood clots and why they might discolor your skin. So we also talked to Dr. Andrea Renata Dean, who has been practicing medicine for almost 20 years. She is a hematology/oncology clinical professor and the founder of Hematology Connect.
She explained that a blood clot is a collection of platelets, red blood cells, and proteins that form a plug in a vein or artery. "I mostly treat patients with blood clots in their veins or deep vein thrombosis, which is due to stasis of blood flow, vascular wall injury, and an inherited/acquired hypercoagulable state. This is known as Virchow triad."
Dean continued, stating that blood clots can occur anywhere in the body but are most commonly found in the legs and lungs: "Signs of a blood clot in the leg are swelling, warmth, redness, tenderness, and pain. Signs of a blood clot in the lung are shortness of breath, chest pain, cough, wheezing hemoptysis, and elevated heart rate."
And she confirmed that your legs or fingers can turn blue when you have a blood clot. "But this mainly occurs when blood circulation to these areas is cut off due to an arterial clot," she added.
Pregnancy increases your risk for a blood clot because of changes in the body's clotting proteins. "Blood clots are dangerous during pregnancy and outside of pregnancy because they can go to your lung, which is known as a pulmonary embolus. A blood clot to the lung can be deadly," Dean cautioned.
Blood clots are treated with blood thinners, and Dean said that patients who are older, have obesity, smoke, are undergoing estrogen therapy, or have decreased mobility, a history of cancer, a history of an autoimmune disease, or an inherited/acquired clotting disorder are all at increased risk. If you have questions or concerns about blood clots, always speak to your doctor.
And now you can say that a story about a pair of blue Shein leggings made you learn something new about blood clots today.
