A young Canadian mother has issued an urgent warning for passengers to get up and move during long flights after she endured a terrifying near-death experience’ when she suffered life-threatening blood clots in both of her lungs when she sat for too long during a long-haul flight.
Going by the name of Emily on the popular social media platform TikTok, the mother shared horrifying details of how a dream trip to Dubai nearly cost her life was not it for the fact that an off-duty doctor and some ‘very competent’ flight attendants saved her life.
“I almost died on a flight from Toronto to Dubai a couple of weeks ago, and I want to talk about it,” Emily says in the harrowing TikTok. “On February 5th, I was flying direct from Toronto to Dubai in Economy Class, and with two and a half hours left in the flight, I had to get up and go to the bathroom,” Emily continued.
“This was the first time that I got up on the whole flight and I walked to the bathroom. Thank god someone was in the bathroom; otherwise, I would have been in the bathroom and locked the door behind me when this happened.”
“I was waiting for the bathroom, and I got this really deep dull aching pain in my chest out of nowhere, and I coughed three times, and that was the last thing I remembered. I was unconscious for five minutes. I fell, I collapsed, I hit my head, I had a huge black eye, I hit my face.”
I had a near-death experience,” Emily said. “Thank god there was a doctor on board and some very amazing, very competent flight attendants who essentially saved my life.”
“What happened, you might be wondering? I had a massive, bilateral saddle pulmonary embolism… a blood clot. A blood clot in both of my lungs. This typically causes most people to die instantly, or they die in the first one to two hours.”
Emily says she was very fortunate to defy medical assumptions about survival rates following such a serious illness but it would be many hours before doctors finally worked out what had happened.
“Fast forward in this story: I got to the hospital six and hours later because, remember, we still had two and half hours left in the flight and then they took me to the airport clinic first for about three hours,” Emily said.
“And then I got to the hospital, where they had to run tests to diagnose me. Brain scans and blood work, and that’s when they realized I had an extremely life-threatening blood clot that was affecting both of my lungs, and it was a miracle I was still alive.”
It turns out that the simple fact that Emily had remained sitting in the same position for hours on end during the 10 hour flight could have been a major contributing factor in Emily suffering the life-threatening double blood clot, couple with the fact that she was on estrogen birth control.
“My PSA of this whole story, why this blood clot happened to me, an otherwise perfectly healthy 33-year-old woman. The doctors believe because I wasn’t moving on my flight, so please get up and move on your flights, and I was on estrogen birth control, which is a huge blood clot risk.”
And it turns out that while compression stockings have long been marketed as a way to reduce the risk of suffering an in-flight blood clot, in Emily’s case, they could have done more harm than good.
“And I was wearing compression stockings. If you’re wearing compression stockings and not moving, it actually cuts off your blood supply. So that’s how I nearly died,” Emily explained.
Australian flag carrier Qantas has long warned that sitting for long periods of time could be a risk factor in Deep Vein Thrombosis – a serious medical condition in which a blood clot forms in a deep vein, usually in the legs, which can cause swelling, pain, and redness in the affected limb.
In some cases, the clot can break loose and travel to the lungs, causing a pulmonary embolism. Other DVT risk factors include using birth control medication or hormone therapy, as well as obesity, smoking, or recent injury or surgery.
While older people are more at risk of suffering a DVT, the condition can also affect younger travelers, especially pregnant women and anyone who is dehydrated.
Qantas has lots of exercise suggestions that passengers can perform in their seats to reduce the risk of DVT, but the airline also encourages passengers to get out of their seats and ‘occasionally’ go for a walk down the aisles when it is safe to do so.
Fellow Oneworld airline, British Airways, also recommends that passengers “take a walk around the cabin regularly” to reduce the risk of DVT.
Air Canada, which operates non-stop flights from Toronto to Dubai, says passengers should walk about the cabin every 60 to 90 minutes, while Emirates suggests passengers take the opportunity to stretch when they get up to use the lavatory. The Dubai-based carrier also suggests passengers do in-seat exercises at regular intervals.
Both Air Canada and Emirates cite separate studies that suggest there is no direct link between air travel and DVT, although the World Health Organisation warns that any form of prolonged immobility could increase your risk of suffering a deep vein thrombosis.
