Two years after NBC News correspondent David Bloom died in the deserts of Iraq, his widow Melanie Bloom has become the national spokesperson for the Coalition to Prevent Deep Vein Thrombosis. She appeared on Wednesday’s Larry King Live and shared this chilling memory:
| “Two nights before he passed away, on one of his phone calls home, he mentioned that he was sleeping outside on top of the tank, under the sky in the Iraqi desert. And he was whispering. And I said, David, you’re scaring me. Why are you whispering? He said, Well, we’re on the Baghdad border, and we have to keep lights low and voices down because of the risk of ambush. And I said, Well, get back into the tent, where it’s safe. He said, You know, I’ve been sleeping with my knees pulled up to my chin every night. I just have to stretch out. I have these leg cramps. And then he moved on, you know, to another topic. Had I known then what I know now, that was a warning sign, a huge warning sign of DVT, of a deep vein thrombosis, and he would be dead two days later. So it’s hard to think back on that conversation and not have the warning bells go off when he mentioned the cramps. It seemed reasonable. I mean, all the crew and the soldiers had aches and pains. They were miserable, you know, in the middle of the desert. |
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